The Sound of My Voice

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Pub Date 13 Mar 2017 | Archive Date 2 Mar 2017

Description

Morris Magellan is an executive who runs a biscuit company in Scotland. He has a house in the suburbs, nice wife and kids and seems, on the surface, to be an embodiment of Thatcherite values. However, there is one major problem. He is a chronic alcoholic and, from the start, we sense that he is doomed and his life is about to disintegrate. He isn't a coke-and-booze bingeing style victim with one eye on the clock, hoping to meet Ms Right and acquire the two kids and the suburban home that will straighten everything out. He already has all this and it hasn't straightened out anything. Magellan's journey will never end. The Sound of My Voice is as extraordinary a vision of alcoholism as Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano.

Morris Magellan is an executive who runs a biscuit company in Scotland. He has a house in the suburbs, nice wife and kids and seems, on the surface, to be an embodiment of Thatcherite values...


Advance Praise

'The Sound of My Voice is the sound of a writer at the peak of his power, and one of the most inventive and daring novels ever to have come out of Scotland. Ron Butlin is that rarest of breeds - a poet who takes the novel form and shows that it is ripe for reinvention. Playful, haunting and moving, this is writing of the highest quality.' Ian Rankin

'One of the greatest pieces of fiction to come out of Britain in the 80s. Genuinely subversive, Butlin's book is a stylistic triumph. A major novel.' Irvine Welsh

'An extraordinarily powerful and redemptive work, as impressive for its use of language as for its emotional appeal. Butlin?s only precursor is Kafka.' Nicholas Royle, Time Out

'A genuinely powerful and redemptive piece of work... uncompromising yet strangely uplifting.' Greg Eden, Bookseller

'The Sound of My Voice is the sound of a writer at the peak of his power, and one of the most inventive and daring novels ever to have come out of Scotland. Ron Butlin is that rarest of breeds...


Available Editions

EDITION Ebook
ISBN 9781911332381
PRICE £5.99 (GBP)

Average rating from 5 members


Featured Reviews

Butlin is extraordinary as always.

For anyone who hasn't already read this I highly recommend it and if you have already read this book I recommend a reread.

Haunting and dark yet entirely relatable even for those who haven't struggled with addiction or known someone who's struggled with addiction.

Just reading how Morris gets through his days is enough to make you never want to have a drink ever again. Butlin pulls back the curtain so the reader can peer inside the mind of a fully functioning alcoholic, and while the scene behind the curtain is not pretty at all we find ourselves unable to look away.

This book is very readable but may not be an *easy* read for everyone. I recommend taking your time to savor every little morsel.

My copy remains full of highlighted passages.

"No time. Work. Work. Biscuits."

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Death pierces this magnificent 'Lost Classic' (as described by Irvine Welsh. Morris Magellan (yes the surname of the sea explorer is pertinent to the tale) is what we might in today's work place call a 'thrusting' executive at a biscuit company. But we soon see his life crumbling. Morris is an alcoholic.
We are told of an unloving father whose death does not evoke grief but a shock in Morris. A force that cuts off part of his mind which is replaced in the novella with Morris's voice. Clever use of narrative pulls us into being the voyeur of classic alcoholic traits. Memory lapses, dependence, uncontrolled language and actions soon spiral Morris out of control.
There is much use today of the term 'a functioning alcoholic' and we hear many stories of those who have sought therapy and 'recovered' although always considering themselves an alcoholic for life. When Ron Butlin wrote this book in 1987 such openness and talking therapies were not in vogue. There is a hint of the life of that classic TV series 'Reggie Perrin' evoked in the way Morris's life tries to contain the addiction in his daily life and routine but events, as Morris discovers, cannot always be ordered or eradicated simply by emptying the bottle.

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