by Ron Butlin

'One of the greatest pieces of fiction to come out of Britain in the '80s ... Butlin's book is a stylistic triumph ... I anticipate that The Sound of My Voice will receive the recognition it deserves as a major novel' Irvine Welsh

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.  The Sound of My Voice is as extraordinary a vision of alcoholism as Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano.

Published by Serpent's Tail at £6.99

'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

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

'The potency of this book lies in the way .. the narrator gets under the skin in a frank, compulsive way, witty, sarcastic, bitter' New Statesman

'Compulsively readable ... a cleverly orchestrated, unique work of fiction' Glasgow Herald

'Written with extraordinary economy and use of internal echo' Scotsman