Jim Drever is a man apart, his closest relationship with the machinery he monitors in the distillery where he's worked for twenty years. He treats everything else with bleakly humorous contempt: his fading marriage, the increasingly bizarre behaviour of his teenage son; his daughter's impending wedding. He can deal with all that in his own way. It's the emails from Cuba, made up of letters from his dead mother, that threaten to bring down Jim's ordered world.

About the Author

Tom McCulloch has published poetry and short stories in various journals including Other Poetry, Northwords, NorthwordsNow, Eildon Tree, Markings, Buzzwords, and Wilderness magazine (New Zealand). He was long-listed for the Herald/ Imagining Scotland short story competition 2011.

Reviews

'"How do the pieces of a life fit together?' This is the key question that protagonist Jim Drever has to answer as he negotiates family dysfunction, workplace rivalries and emotional journeys. In The Stillman Tom McCulloch chronicles lives veering between sourness and cynicism, energy and optimism, and does so with acute observation and wickedly black humour.' James Robertson, author of The Professor of Desire, And the Land Lay Still, The Testament of Gideon Mack, etc

McCulloch offers a convincing insight into what it is to be Scottish - indeed what it is to be a human being - while building a thoroughly absorbing story which flits effortlessly between the Highlands and Cuba. Often poetic and with generous dashes of black humour, The Stillman builds satisfyingly towards an ending that keeps you guessing until the last page.

* What's On North *

This is a funny, emotional work . . . with gallows humour undercutting the worst of Jim's mistakes and plenty of quotable passages on the damage life does to us, The Stillman is well worth reading.

* Buzz Magazine *

The mystery turns into a powerful depiction of a man struggling to come to terms with his past and to live in his present.

* The Herald *

It is testament to McCulloch's remarkable craft that despite Jim's flaws, the reader keeps engaged with him right until the very end.

* The Booktrust *



Book Information
ISBN 9781908737670
Author Tom McCulloch
Format Paperback
Page Count 286
Imprint Sandstone Press Ltd
Publisher Sandstone Press Ltd
Weight(grams) 272g
Dimensions(mm) 195mm * 130mm * 20mm