Queer Narratives: A Reflection of Douglas Stuart’s “John of John”

I have a tendency to read novels in topical spates, say Mormon polygamy, or long-distance swimming (there are more of these than you think). Developed long before algorithms began pushing similar titles my way, this semi-unconscious habit of circling a topic serves me well.  While others turn to non-fiction to gain comprehension of a subject, I rely on fictional narratives, told from a variety of perspectives, cultures, or time periods, to fuel my understanding and empathy.

These are politically volatile times, and more than ever I have been seeking solace in a good book. Always a reader of the latest contemporary fiction, I only recently discovered the many pleasures of queer romance stories.

In late January, I picked up Book #1 of Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, upon which the steamy “Heated Rivalry” (HR) television series is based.  Over the next few weeks, I became increasingly undone while consuming the half-dozen titles.  Reading dialogue in which gay men overcome personal and societal hurdles to be emotionally vulnerable with each other felt good. Knowing that despite all the challenges each story would end happily, nurtured my need to believe that our democracy, too, could survive all adversities and arise stronger.   

Even before North America fell for HR’s Shane and Iyla, 21^stC novelists had been increasingly peppering their novels with gay and bi-sexual men.  This winter my reading has included Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s “The Lake Effect,” Patrick Ryan’s “Buckeye,” and Grant Grinder’s “So Old, So Young.” In each, the cast includes a queer man, often closeted, whose existence, while under-developed, is essential to the novel’s plot. The male character’s homosexuality is stereotypically the cause of catastrophe, be it chemical dependency or family fragmentation.

These unsatisfying and incomplete portrayals sent me in search of queer-centered narratives. Leading the charge for more tales of forbidden-love were the unsettling BDSM*[1] film “Pillion” (2025), and the novel upon which it is based, “Box Hill” (2020) by Adam Mars-Jones. Both feature an intense coming-of-age tale set within a kinky biker community in 1970’s Surrey.  While walking through the park on his 18^th birthday, Colin literally trips and falls over leather daddy Ray, who will come to rule Colin’s world.  As Colin matures, he dares to express his wish for a more balanced and public relationship. In response, the unknowable Ray evaporates overnight. The sour taste of a protagonist abandoned for desiring reciprocal love sent me scurrying back to the romance shelves.

Regency-era romance author Cat Sebastian, has recently written a pair of books set in late 1960’s NYC. In each, an unlikely friendship develops into much more, once everyone gets past myriad misread signals and suffocating self-abnegation. “We Could Be So Good” (2023), features a budding attraction between an old school investigative reporter and the hapless son of the newspaper’s publisher, whom he is asked to mentor. In “You Should Be So Lucky” (2024), enduring affection blooms when a paper’s snobby arts reviewer is assigned to write a serial sports column about a newly traded young shortstop struggling to find his groove.  The deft ways that Sebastian finds for these pre-Stonewall couples to happily share their lives as partners and lovers, while remaining necessarily publicly-closeted, is heart-warming.

Shifting away from fairytale love stories to more literary historical fiction, next up is Carys Davies’s “Clear” (2024).  Situated during the Highland Clearances in 1843, Ivar, a tenant farmer, discovers the unconscious naked body of a man along the shore of his otherwise deserted Scottish island.  The man, John, is an impoverished minister come on assignment from the mainland to evict Ivar from his humble home.  While being painstakingly nursed back to health, a deep connection develops between the men. Working through a language barrier, they nonetheless create meaningful patterns of cohabitation. Their household is upended with the arrival of John’s headstrong wife, come to finish the eviction and reclaim her husband.  Despite this grim setting, Davies gifts us with an inconclusive ending in which the male bond is honored. 

I am a married lesbian and mother living in San Francisco, a city known for its embrace of LBGTQ+ people. Born, in a midwestern suburb in 1963, to a straight woman and a closeted gay man, I am also a child of divorce. Decisions to deny, decry, or accept a person’s sexual identity have shaped my life, and that of my family members. 

The power of discovering personal truths in a novel cannot be underestimated.  It has happened to me twice of late. The ill-conceived hospitality displayed by Gloria Bonaventura, the sixty-something protagonist of Lionel Shiver’s “A Better Life,” in welcoming an expanding cast of increasingly challenging immigrants into her NYC home, had me cringing in recognition at my own well-meaning naivete in similar circumstances. Seeing myself in a liberal do-gooder is not such a stretch, but finding resonate biographical parallels in “John of John,” Douglas Stuart’s shame-fueled novel set in a Calvinist crofting settlement on the Isle of Harris, in the Outer Hebrides, circa the 1990’s, is a surprise.

In “John of John,” homosexuality is the spool around which the threads of the characters’ lives are wound so tightly that the tension is strangling the very life out of them. Stuart’s three main characters Cal, John, and Innes, are all men attracted to men, living in dread of exposure. One fears the judgment and potential loss of his family, another is torn between his faith and his desires, and the third, while cowed by societal mores, is increasingly ready to declare his love and let the chips fall where they may. 

Old world shepherding traditions, deeply conservative Protestantism, and a pervasive lack of privacy caused by living on a small island with generations of intermarried families, leads to tortured existences for those of alternative sexual identities. Shame and silence, the superpowers of Scottish reserve, permeate every interaction. The contrast between the claustrophobic interior lives of these men and the vast open hills and unending seas which surround them is striking.

Watching the men struggle against their natural urges and deep emotions has me feeling empathy for my father’s decision, in his early 20’s, to marry a woman and hope for the best.

Yet it is the female characters in Stuart’s novel where new personal truths are revealed to me. John’s young wife Grace discovers her husband’s truer love lives on a nearby farm. Acting with generosity, she holds her tongue and remakes her life without malice. Newly steeped in the societal constraints of the recent past, I am moved to reflect on the wisdom and kindness of my own mother, who in 1972 permitted my gay father regular weekend visitation and semi-annual vacations with my brother and me.      

Grandmothers can be keen taskmasters, moral standard-bearers, and staunch holders of traditions. They are also sources of unconditional love, the people who see us more clearly than our parents. Such is Cal’s maternal grandmother Ella. She is his best friend, knowing all and saying little.  Having freshly completed textile and fashion coursework on the Scottish mainland, Cal’s concern for his maternal grandmother’s health draws him back to isolated home and unsophisticated island life.

When I was pre-adolescent, my maternal grandmother was my companion and friend.  As my parents were separating, she moved to be near us. Reflecting on all the things Ella knows but doesn’t say, I am struck anew by the knowledge that my Nana knew all about my father’s evolving identity. Like my mother, she chose liberality. Nana’s counsel and consent certainly contributed to my mother’s charity toward my father’s unconventional lifestyle.  Though given the breadth of all that goes unspoken in “John of John,” I wonder how much denial, a lack of vocabulary, and a desire to appear in good social standing, contributed to the familia stasis we swiftly adopted.

With dialogue and silences which resonate equally, “John of John” is a beautifully crafted story, threaded with weaving metaphors, rich in multi-hued imagery, and embodied with perfectly imperfect people. Literature reflects our truths.  The best of it causes us to reflect more deeply on our world, our neighbors, and ourselves, and such is my understanding of my personal history changed through the power of Stuart’s creation.

Whether through the unflinching naturalistic directness of “John of John,” or a romance’s buoyant assertion that loves triumphs over all, today’s writers are filling our shelves with stories of same-sex love.  They show us the societal consequences of intolerance, in hopes that the tides don’t turn once more against queer folk.

Written by Jen Norris, published June 11, 2027

[1] BDSM: bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, and Sado-masochism