Stimulating humour whips through this walk with 70 year old Morris and his younger self, yet it’s also a surprisingly emotional and thought-provoking read. Morris returns to his childhood home in order to create music, however things don’t go according to plan. Award-winning novelist Ron Butlin, is a former Edinburgh Poet Laureate, and has an exquisite eye for the small and quiet things that actually really matter. I can confirm that this can be read as a standalone, however a middle-aged Morris featured in The Sound of My Voice, which Irvine Welsh described as: "One of the greatest pieces of fiction to come out of Britain in the Eighties”. It feels as though Ron is dreaming rather than living as the haunting past creates havoc in the present day. While there were plenty of snort-worthy moments, my heart ached as the impact of his life began to settle in shards around him. I fell in love with the ending and the possibilities on offer. So Many Lives and All of them Yours offers a huge cloudburst of emotion and comes as highly recommended by the LoveReading team.
After being sacked from his high-power executive job, Morris now has nothing to lose. He is free – sort of. Determined to devote what time he has left to creating music, his lifelong dream, he returns to his childhood home, ‘to kickstart his life once more – and this time get it right!’ Very soon, however, things start going wrong. Very wrong. Not only does his past catch up with him, but the future that is rushing towards him becomes more threatening by the day. Old bad habits creep back in again. Then he meets Jess.
Upbeat, laugh-out-loud funny, this compelling novel, set in the Borders, swinging sixties London and present-day Edinburgh, touches on music, Scottish independence, love in later life and, most of all, how to make the most of one’s life before it is too late.
Before becoming a writer, Ron Butlin was a pop-song lyricist, a footman, barnacle-scraper on the Thames and a male model. Widely translated, his work has twice been awarded a 'Best Foreign Novel' prize. His previous novel, Ghost Moon, was nominated for the international IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2016. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, the writer Regi Claire.
