Almost 40 years in the making, this long-awaited follow up to the award-winning The Sound of My Voice follows Morris Magellan after he has been sacked from his high-power executive position. Seeing this as a chance to finally restart his life afresh, things don’t quite go to plan as familiar habits resurface. But then he meets Jess. We caught up with Ron to discuss returning to familiar characters and the personal aspects of this life-affirming novel.

So Many Lives and All of Them are Yours
By Ron Butlin
Published by Polygon

Congratulations on the publication of your latest novel, So Many Lives and All of Them Are Yours. Could you tell us a little bit about what readers should expect from it?

Have you ever wished you could RETURN TO GO and start your life all over again? Second time round you’ll know better, won’t you? Have a better chance to get things right. The main character in So Many Lives and All of Them are Yours certainly seems to think so. 

Exit Morris Magellan the ex-biscuit administrator and enter Morris the would-be composer, determined to live the dream. As Morris gives it his all, the reader can expect a rather bumpy if darkly entertaining ride. 

So Many Lives and All of Them Are Yours features the protagonist known from your iconic novel The Sound of My Voice, published in 1987. What prompted you to return to this character after so many years?

I didn’t return to Morris, not exactly. Instead, I set off on a different journey with a different character. Or so I thought. 

When, after a week’s work, I read the opening few pages to my wife, also a writer, as a try-out, she instantly put her finger on the nub. ‘You’re writing about Morris from The Sound of My Voice.’ 

I stared. ‘I am?’ 

It was like she’d turned on the light and, for one brief moment, I saw the entire novel at a glance. I felt its weight, its tensions, heard its voice. The moment passed, as they do, but what remained was the certainty that a new ‘Morris’ novel was out there, somewhere. I only had to write it. 

In addition to being an acclaimed novelist, poet, and children’s author, you have written several libretti for opera. Music also plays an important role in the life of Morris, the leading character of your novel. How does music inspire your writing?

At sixteen I hitched down to sixties London and found myself writing lyrics for a pop group. The band’s high point was a two-minute slot on a tv show, wearing tartan miniskirts and with dry-ice blowing about their bare knees. The band broke up shortly after. I kept writing, didn’t find another band and started calling the song-lyrics poems. 

I love music, especially classical. Composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Bartók never lie. For the last ten years I have given courses in music appreciation at Edinburgh University – a privilege and a pleasure. Listening to music, discussing and sharing music, helps keep me in touch with what I can only call the truth of things. Music helps me keep my life on track. It teaches me how to structure my work, to develop form and narrative. Above all, how to make every word count and to keep it true. 

The book is set in the Borders, swinging sixties London, and Edinburgh in the present day. What drew you to these specific settings?

I was brought up in a small village near Lockerbie; for several years I hung out in sixties London and got to know its street-life. I saw The Stones in Hyde Park and once went up in a lift with Paul McCartney – this was a particularly confused period of my life; I now live in Edinburgh. 

Like three themes combining in a piece of music, the experiences and emotional charge I carried away from each of these very different places strongly contributes to the novel. But why these places – and not Paris, say, or the Isle of Lewis, Fredericton in New Brunswick, the hills above Barcelona and a commune in the Australian outback where I have also spent time? I simply don’t know. As always, I discovered the novel scene by scene rather than wrote it – like piecing together a jigsaw, but without any box picture to guide me.  

What do you hope readers take from So Many Lives and All of Them Are Yours?

I hope the reader will enjoy the humour – often lol, I’m told – and share something of Morris’s desperate attempt to restart his life and make the most of his time before it is too late. In fact, he restarts it several times and keeps on trying right to the very last page. An inspiration to us all? Hmm… 

What are you looking forward to reading next? 

I have three books lined up. One is a reread: Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. The other two are: Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus, which discusses how our digital life – internet, smart phones etc. – is robbing us of the ability to think rationally; lastly, Alastair Moffat’s Scotland, A History from Earliest Times, which I am certain will be a most engaging and fascinating read.    

So Many Lives and All of Them are Yours by Ron Butlin is published by Polygon, priced £12.00.