A Son of the Rock

Scottish Cultural Press, 1997. 115p.

Ten year old Malcolm witnesses his father’s death at home in bed. His coping mechanism is to try to keep everything outside, so that there will be no pain. After the funeral he and his mother go to live with his Aunt Fiona who runs a care home for the elderly. Aunt Fiona is a disturbed, overbearing type, with strong religious convictions and a misunderstanding of children but also the urge to enter Mrs Goldfire’s room at night, where she tries in vain to restrain her wicked urges. Malcolm’s embroilment in this one-sided and slightly physically abusive relationship – Mrs Goldfire is asleep most of the time and incapable of much movement in any case – is intermingled with his and Aunt Fiona’s complicity in a mutual fascination, which acquires sexual overtones.

The narrative is multi stranded. The first two sections are strict third person, from an authorial perspective; thereafter narration is shared between Malcolm and Aunt Fiona. Malcolm’s passages are in the second person, a reflection of his estrangement from the world. Those from Aunt Fiona are in third. Butlin seems fond of second person narration; his earlier novel The Sound Of My Voice employed it throughout, though with the flow and ebb of Malcolm’s detachment it is not adhered to strictly here.

Night Visits is not as compelling as Butlin’s The Sound Of My Voice (see my review here) but is still an insightful study of obsession, loss and coming to terms with grief.