The Booker winner\u2019s epic tale of gay love and loneliness in the Hebrides charts an uneasy homecoming against a backdrop of repression<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a common greeting in the Outer Hebrides: the lineage-establishing \u201cWho do you belong to?\u201d By the time this question is posed to 22-year-old gay Harris islander John-Calum Macleod, or Cal, in Douglas Stuart\u2019s new novel, there is a sense that Cal is his father John\u2019s beyond the ordinary claims of blood \u2013 the latter\u2019s sway containing undercurrents of domineering ownership.<\/p>\n
The book opens with the two conducting a strange ritual over the phone, performed regularly ever since Cal moved to Edinburgh to study textiles: John, a precentor, reads to Cal in Gaelic from the New Testament and has him sing back \u201cwith the full power of his belief\u201d. The verse John recites \u2013 which prefigures the novel\u2019s themes of repression and self-denial \u2013 urges the faithful to guide the errant and to stay vigilant against temptation. After receiving Cal\u2019s assent, John orders him to return home, ostensibly because Cal\u2019s maternal grandmother, Ella, is sick. Though John lives with Ella in her croft house, she is his ex-wife\u2019s mother and thus not his responsibility.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/f3835a9e8db26f4b2c5e6117e69a619acd0dd3ef\/321_0_4737_3789\/master\/4737.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=f89d3752565d29fcb40692047eb2688c\" "\\"John")
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