1. JOHN OF JOHN begins in a solitary red phone box in Edinburgh as Cal Mcleod is summoned home after four years in art school by his strict Calvinist father, John. While Cal’s postgraduation life in Edinburgh sounds bleak, returning to his sternly pious father after a taste of modernity and freedom is less enticing still. Did you question his decision to return home to Harris? Would you, in a similar situation, have stayed in Edinburgh?

2. The Isle of Harris presents a hypnotic but severe backdrop of hard stone, dark skies, scabbed hillsides and black tar roads that impact the mood of nearly every scene. Yet, as traditional Scottish home weavers, John and Cal see the world in vividly distinct color. How did John and Cal’s shared --- and deeply sensitive --- reckoning of color stack up against an otherwise cold, difficult relationship?

3. Doll’s self-assessment is brutal. Speaking of the girls he knows from the island, he says, “They look at me like I’m a life sentence.” Being the only Macdonald son, he is the darling of his mother’s eye but is sentenced to life at the croft, and on the boat. Being tied to land you will never own and will die poor trying to keep seems a heavy burden to bear in an emptying village. Can you think of a comparable familial or professional scenario now, 30 years on in the United States?

4. Throughout the story, the characters’ relationships are partly defined by the use of Gaelic vs. English. This usage can indicate intimacy, remove, respect, exclusion or ownership, and Gaelic cloaks the cruelty of the scripture with its beauty and rhythm. When the characters slipped out of Gaelic and into English, or punctuated English usage with Gaelic, how did you feel? Were you surprised to discover which characters ultimately understood Gaelic?

5. Once back at the family croft in Falabay, Cal is abruptly faced with a present littered with unresolved conflicts and relationships from his childhood, including the decades-long fallout of his father’s closeted homosexuality. While the reader is let in on this secret early and steadily throughout the story, Cal doesn’t realize until the end that his father has been in a relationship with their close friend and neighbor, Innes, since before Cal was born. What did you make of Cal’s blind spot as you moved through the story?

Guide written by Paula Cooper