NIGHT VISITS (Scottish Cultural Press 1997 and Serpent’s Tail 2003)
‘spellbinding and compassionate’
The Independent
‘My novel of the Year’
Edwin Morgan in The Scotsman, Books of the Year
‘Butlin is a successor to Kafka or Borges, two names that should be invoked whenever the necessity to save the short story may be questioned. Butlin writes with penetrating insight and reassuring compassion about people who have exhausted their own supplies of hope, yet in his hands they are never entirely hopeless.’
Time Out
‘exceptionally good . . . Excellently depicted and a credit to the skill and compassion of Butlin, this is contemporary fiction at its best.’
The Void
‘. . . as with the best psychological tales, [Night Visits] succeeds because it leaves the real terrors to the imagination.’
The Scotsman
‘This Bergman-bleak novel is devastating but eventually uplifting.’
Uncut
‘Though the setting lends itself to gothic overstatement, Butlin’s exploration of emotional abuse is shocking without being sensationalist.’
Guardian