If we were to mix in a food processor This charming man by The Smiths, Unorthodox, the series based on Deborah Feldman's book, and Uncle Vanya by Chekhov, we would get John, Son of John by Douglas Stuart (Random House). Do you understand? Stuart adds an ingredient, as if that weren't enough: Breaking the Waves by Lars von Trier.
John, Son of John starts with a 22-year-old son who returns home ruined after the confusing university years. Important fact: "home" means one of the Hebrides Islands, a kind of frozen Lanzarote, lonely if it weren't for the sheep and governed by an almost fanatical Presbyterian community.
The boy listens to independent rock (we are in the 1990s), has a wonderful eye and hand for sewing, has seen the big world, and is gay, but how is he going to say it? In his island, a wrathful father, an elusive mother, a complicit grandmother, a drunk friend, an extremely intelligent neighbor, and a neighbor who indeed is that charming man from The Smiths await him. Sometimes they speak in Gaelic and sometimes in English, thus keeping their secrets. The novel will try to find a little peace for each one. Some will get lost along the way.
-In Spain, we don't know much about Presbyterians.
-Presbyterians believe that God does not exist to comfort us or to save us. We are born in sin, we live in sin, we will die in sin, and the future for most of us will be hell. God, before we are born, has decided our destiny, so it is not worth campaigning for our salvation.
That's where the conversation with Stuart, winner of the Booker Prize thanks to Shuggie Bain's Story, begins. Stuart is not Presbyterian; he is not an islander either. He is a 50-year-old man, raised in Glasgow, in a world of Catholics and Anglicans, alcoholic mothers, impossible fathers, and post-industrial ruin. He studied fashion, moved to New York, and made his life work.
"Catholics confess and are forgiven by God. Presbyterians don't. It is a very strict, very harsh faith but also beautiful in its purity, in its nakedness," Stuart continues.
And love? The word love appears no more than two or three times in John, Son of John, but its characters seek it desperately. Romantic love, sexual love, filial love... "Love exists in that world: for God, for family. Ultimately, it is the clearest love because it is not based on negotiation with Him. The novel speaks of love in all its forms," says Stuart.
In all its forms but with the experience of a homosexual boy lost at the end of the world as a measure of the world. "Any young gay person born in the new millennium expects to be accepted. I am 50 years old, and in the first half of my life, I inhabited a very dark world for gay people. We felt very lonely, prejudices were considered fair. In part, I write these books because the queer community is so delighted to move forward with its celebration, moving towards the future. And I believe that no, we have to acknowledge where we come from. I love queer fiction and I love working-class fiction, but those two things never overlap. There is a huge silence for me because I couldn't find anyone who fit my experience of the working class and my gay experience. Because it is very different to be gay and go to university and escape to Barcelona or San Francisco than to be gay in an industrial town or on a farm from which there is no way out."
Are we talking about gay culture? "When I was a kid, the representation of being gay in the UK was in James Ivory's films. Chariots of Fire, A Room with a View... Being gay was going to Oxford and playing cricket. Those were valuable films for me but they were not my world. Well: there was music, full of secret codes. The Smiths, above all."