The Library Lunchtime Book Club | December | JOHN OF JOHN

Afternoon book club led by the Oxford Exchange Bookstore Team, held in-person at The Library in St. Pete. Join us for an afternoon book club led by the Oxford Exchange Bookstore Team! All readers are welcome! Held in person at The Library in St. Pete on the last Wednesday of every month. This book club focuses on popular, yet compelling book club novels that spark connection and conversation. Books are available in-person or online at the Oxford Exchange Bookstore . LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “This excavation of family, violence and shame is woven through with beautiful imagistic detail, and—unexpectedly—shades of hope. We loved the rich, textural detail of the story.”—The Booker Prize 2026 judges “Douglas Stuart brilliantly weaved a layered, compelling and yet so intimate a story of identity, what it means to belong, and the courage to claim your own truth.”—Oprah Winfrey “One of 2026's literary triumphs.”— Boston Globe From the Booker Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo comes a vivid, moving novel following a young man returning to his Hebridean island home, a portrait of a father’s expectations and a son’s desires Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides to find that little has changed except for him. He returns to the windswept croft and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother. Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn't the only one in the croft