“He crossed to the yarn shelves. It was his favorite place in the whole world. ‘Look at all the new colours!’ The shelves were full of hundreds of yarns, all the romantic colours of Scotland: bracken and grouse, gorse and heather, rain and moss, the chafed red of a drunkard’s face, and pure, bilious whitey. Amongst these were punkish hot pinks and acid yellows, violent tones that made people recoil until they saw the finished cloth and saw how skilfully John could mix sour greens with wheats and nightshades until it was a field of spring bluebells.”
– Douglas Stuart, John of John
The use of colors in this book is nothing short of miraculous.
Meet Cal. John. Ella. Grace. Innes. Doll. Isla. Names that will leave their mark in your imagination, like so many delicate hues, smudges of paint fingerprinted across your heart.
Watch their personalities run in circles like wild horses inside all of the polarities that barricade our lives: city and island, secularism and religion, God and existential absurdity, gay and straight, family and individuality, land and sea, Gaelic and English, culture and inner life, social obligations and personal freedom.
Watch what happens when the inherent chaos and messiness of humans push against the edges of these false dichotomies, the black-and-whiteness of it all. The soul-sucking grey of conformity.
An explosion of colors. Feelings bursting through the seams. The minutiae of craft. Love that cannot be explained or contained or ignored.
We are watching a writer/artist at the top of his game, still haunted by his beautiful mother, still inhabited by a powerful sense of guilt, use his phenomenal language to express how miserable and melancholy life can be when essential words are left unsaid: “I love you”, “I am sorry”, “This is how I feel”.
John of John is a study of emotions as literal “energies in motion”. They soar, they move, they act upon the world, they effect change and give birth to your self.
Douglas Stuart, your beautiful mother is out there somewhere, smiling at you.
