Tom Hubbard

Tom Hubbard's latest book, Slavonic Dances, is a sequence of three linked novellas which explore the comic and tragic implications of encounters by Scottish characters with matters of eastern and east-central Europe.

 

When you read this lovely, many-voiced book, travelling with it across borders and back through generations, you will find that you enter into a very various company. From the Preface by DAVID BETTERIDGE.
 

There is much in the way of literary craftsmanship in these contrasting stories, and a deceptive delicacy in their telling. Simplicity of language belies both considerable skill and sensibility in the telling. Hubbard’s poetic abilities, although clearly deployed, never obtrude on his gifts as a storyteller, nor does he lose sight of his central purpose at any point. BILL DUNLOP, EdinburghGuide.com. 
 

All three stories, then, focus on Scotland, on Scottishness, on Scottish attitudes and values – but all in a European context. It is almost as though, in the post-Brexit world overtaking us, Hubbard has determined to write a book demonstrating just how typically Scottish and European lives are intertwined. Tom Hubbard is a literary exemplar of the connection between Scotland and Europe. No surprise then to find in the text of these stories a wealth of allusions – some familiar, some much less so – to the literary and musical culture of Europe. [The stories’] ambivalent endings do carry emotional conviction. And the narratives of the stories’ protagonists appeal because of the complexities in both their characters and their lives.’ANDREW HOOK, Scottish Review.  

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