Oprah Winfrey picks "John of John" by Douglas Stuart for book club: Read a free excerpt
Oprah Winfrey on Tuesday exclusively announced "John of John" by Douglas Stuart as her latest book club pick on "CBS Mornings."
"John of John" is about a young man called back to his rural Scottish hometown, where he has to hide his queer identity. When he returns home, he slowly discovers that his deeply religious father and his profanity-loving grandmother are keeping secrets of their own that threaten to tear the family and the community apart.
"The novel is so much about how men spend their entire life avoiding the emotional truth. While women have to carry all the knowing quietly, you know, they have to carry it inside themselves," Stuart told "CBS Mornings."
Winfrey said she was "so impressed" by the novel and called it "liberating."
"What it takes to repress who you really are, what it takes to do that means you've stifled your life," Winfrey said. "You've been enslaved to somebody else's idea of who you should be instead of being who you should be. That's why I find the novel to be liberating for people who have been suppressing themselves."
Getting informed by Winfrey that his book was selected was "mind blowing" for Stuart.
"It's a Wednesday evening and you're sat by your phone and then you get a phone call and very quickly you realize, 'oh, this really is the real Oprah Winfrey.' Cuz there is only one. It was one of the most wonderful and most surreal phone calls of my entire life," he said.
Read a free excerpt of "John of John" by Douglas Stuart (PDF 67.94 KB )