In Night Visits, Ron Butlin evokes Joyce's Dubliners from the start. In doing so, he starts with the image with which Joyce ends (snow) linked with the fact of life with which Joyce begins (death). Butlin begins:
A few seconds before he died Malcolm's father raised his head from the pillow to look out at the falling snow. Loose flakes were being blown into the top corner of the window, flattening there until one by one they stuck to the glass. There was no sky any more, and no village. Soon the garden itself would disappear.(1)

The echo of Gabriel watching the snow fall outside the hotel room window is unmistakable. Snow hits the window, and the disappearing garden recalls the disappearing churchyard of Gabriel's imagination.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried.(2)

The opening of Night Visits differs from the conclusion of "The Dead," however, in that Butlin's passage is definitely followed by a death, while in Joyce's such a death remains only a possibility, even as the story concludes with that most conclusive of words, "dead": "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."(3) The certain death of Malcolm's father itself echoes the opening line of the first story in Dubliners, "The Sisters": "There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke."(4) By connecting Joyce's end and beginning, Butlin performs a Wakean operation on Dubliners. The Joycean echoes in the prologue also alert the knowledgeable reader to a similarity in situation between "The Sisters" and Butlin's novella: a man dies, leaving behind a young boy and two sisters. Instead of an unofficial student, however, the boy in Butlin's version is the man's son. The sisters are not the dead man's sisters, but his wife and her older sister. This sister, the boy's Aunt Fiona, takes on the role of the corrupted religious figure which belonged to the dead priest in "The Sisters." That the home into which Malcolm and his mother move following the death of Malcolm's father doubles as a female-run nursing home strengthens the connections to both "The Sisters" and "The Dead" since, as Marilyn French has pointed out, these two stories occur in "women's world."(5) Through these parallels, Night Visits points to an intertextual space in which institutions corrupt and personal, individual connections have the potential to heal, though only to the degree that they themselves can function in ways that escape institutionalisation and codification.

In Night Visits, Fiona abuses her nephew right up to the point of incest; precisely what Father Flynn has done to the boy-narrator of "The Sisters" to make him so troubled by their relationship that he has nightmares about the priest remains subject to debate, though no hints of sexual abuse were present in the first available version of the story, published in The Irish Homestead in 1904.(6) On the other hand, one of the earliest readers of Dubliners, George Roberts of Maunsel & Co. which had agreed to publish the book in 1909, did suspect its presence, as Joyce noted in a 1912 letter to his brother: "He asked me very narrowly was there sodomy also in The Sisters and what was 'simony' and if the priest was suspended only for the breaking of the chalice."(7) Joyce neglected to record his answer, and so the uncertainty remains.

What is certain even in the final text, however, is that while Fiona at the end of Butlin's novella is alive and has the possibility of redemption, there is no such possibility for the dead Father Flynn: there is no hope indeed.Read intertextually, then, the differences between Aunt Fiona and Father Flynn create a series of prerequisites for the possibility of redemption from religious perversion. The most obvious distinction is the lack of any official religious position for Fiona: if she can leave behind her self-imposed rituals, then she can leave behind the grip of fear and pain. Father Flynn, however, even when rendered incapable of carrying out the Church's rites cannot escape his title or his authority. His position entangles him. He continues to be Father Flynn, to carry an institutional title, while Fiona has a title born from family connections: Aunt Fiona. In the intertextual space, institutional connections corrupt while the familial and personal has at least the potential both to redeem.

Though Fiona's rituals are self-imposed, they do reflect a degree of institutional influence from both the church and the nursing home into which she has converted her house. The link between these two institutions is emphasised when Malcolm says of the stained glass window on the stairs, "Makes the place look gloomy. Like a church,"(8) and when this same window is revealed to depict angels and the legend "FEAR GOD IN LIFE."(9) Fiona's fear and corruption have at least some of their roots in religion. The first words which express her sense of torment in the text, rendered in free indirect speech, reflect her indoctrination:

What had she done wrong?
If she kept holding the Bible she would be safe.
Her slightest movement rubbed her body against her nightdress, against the sheet. Temptation.
Temptation, and then sin. Wickedness.(10)

At the 2009 Scottish Gothic Conference at the University of Stirling, Martyn Colebrook described Fiona as "an archetype of internal corrosion, sexual deprivation and near-psychotic religious fanaticism, a withdrawn woman who is struggling to understand the death of her mother." Her attaching herself to another institution, by running a nursing home, only make matters worse. Having absolute power over those who cannot leave their beds is shown to corrupt not only her, but the nursing-home employee Stella as well. Stella refers to a patient as an "old biddy" who will "not notice when she's dead"; she even refers to the patients who can leave their beds by the de-humanising term "mobiles."(11) For Fiona, the effects are even more extreme. The presence of the helpless people in an institution in which she has authority becomes a source of temptation, and a reminder of the joy she took in having power over her dying mother: "During the final months Mother had become weak and tearful. It was a real joy to ignore her pathetic whining and clinging, and instead, in what was to become her best professional manner, she'd ask if she was comfortable."(12) That what a daughter might do to hurt her mother meets professional standards is also a damning commentary on the institution of the nursing home.

Still, despite the power she had, Fiona could not arrange the circumstances around her mother's death in an satisfying way. Instead, with her institutional power over the nursing home's residents, she is able to act out a more ideal end again and again:

The old lady's hand was resting lightly on her head. Yes, that was what she had come for. That was how it should have been all those years ago. The smell of the bedclothes, the frailty of the hand, the slow breathing, and the closeness between them--that, most of all. The bony fingers lay unsteadily on her hair, then began caressing her face. Nothing else mattered except the tenderness. The love.

Fiona, allowed and encouraged by the structure of the institution, steals the form of love instead of seeking love for herself; she does not move forward from the pain of the past. A moment later, she feels the very sort of sexual desire for which she must in turn berate herself:

That was when her nipples began hardening, her thighs aching to be touched. She turned and almost ran from the room, her whole body burning, burning.
Wickedness, wickedness, wickedness.(13)

The institution of the nursing home, in which she has some power, and the institution of religion, in which she has none, together entrap her. When she attempts to escape this trap, she does so not by attacking or leaving the institutions but by attempting to kill the powerless Mrs. Goldfire by smothering her with a pillow; she acts out again her fantasies about her mother. She remains trapped even as she considers that "[l]oss, once stated, should be speedily dispatched,"(14) and she uses a handkerchief into which her sister cried to further her performance with Mrs. Goldfire, even as she disdains her sister's tearfulness.

Fiona's inability to construct a satisfactory conclusion to the relationship with her mother relates to her having condemned her mother in unyielding religious terms. Fiona's memories of the funeral show her rejoicing, or wanting to rejoice, in a pointedly religious way: "the effort had been to keep from shouting out 'Amen'. . . or even cheering as Mother's coffin slid from sight."(15) Her mother is even at times constructed as a witch, as when Fiona thinks:

If God was protecting her, nothing else mattered. Not the rain, the cold and, most of all, not Mother. She had been taken away and burned years ago.(16)

Fiona even believes that she has been told by God to ignore her Mother as she dies and to refuse to read to her from the Bible. "It was His will that Mother had died without one word of love."(17) Clearly, in Fiona's mind, her mother is too wicked to be asked for forgiveness, let alone forgiven.

Her inability to let go of the mother she hated is only part of her isolation. Fiona further separates herself from others by trying to avoid extended socialising. When she goes to the Post Office to get boxes, her response to the people there expressing sympathy over the loss of her brother-in-law is to wonder: "Why couldn't they let her go? She was busy, very busy."(18) Her need to be busy comes from her need to avoid idleness, and her position in the nursing home helps her to fulfill this need on a permanent basis. After all, as she observes, "illness created work."(19) The religious cliche "idle hands are the devil's playthings" haunts Fiona's obsessive structuring of her life which is emphasised in the text through the use bullet-point lists.

This is what she would do:

• On with her coat and warm boots.
• Out of the cottage and left along the low road.
• Turn right, and up ot the Post Office shop. (If she met anyone on the way she would say a polite 'Good morning' and pass on.)
• Push open the Post Office door.
• 'Good morning' to whoever was there. (If there were other customers and she had to wait, she would glance at the postcard/newspaper rack. She'd be quite all right.)
• Up to the counter. The shopkeeper was called Mrs Doyle. Or was it Mrs Douglas? Mrs Doyle. Another 'Good morning', then a polite: 'Do you have any spare boxes, please? Empty cardboard boxes would be better. 'Do you have any empty cardboard boxes, please? (No small talk, no explanations. Mrs Doyle would understand why they were need.)
• Get the boxes and leave. Less than a minute in and out.
• Return here to Margaret's to finish packing away Peter's effects.
• A light lunch, and drive back to Edinburgh in time to catch up with the last two days' work.
• A restful evening by the fire. Some Bible, some TV.
• Her sleeping-pill.
• Straight to bed.(20)

The closer to others she comes, the more minute her organising. Her need to be busy, driven by her religious mania, keeps her isolated.

Father Flynn's isolation has its own religious roots, though they have less to do with faith and more to do with the Church as an institution. He is separated from the average Dubliner by his priestly status. It is also the priesthood which has allowed him and his sisters to move from the poverty of Irishtown to Great Britain Street by providing them with the initial increase in income to allow such a move (though later when Father Flynn is unable to carry out his duties, his sisters have to take in work to support him). Gerhard Friedrich notes that this move reflects and contributes to a state in which "[a]ll normal human relationships . . . have in "The Sisters" suffered serious and bewildering dislocation,"(21) though he fails to see how religion has created this situation rather than merely being itself the site of disrupted relationships.

The boys whom Father Flynn and Aunt Fiona (possibly and potentially) abuse are isolated for less institutionally-rooted reasons. Malcolm isolates himself to protect himself from grief, and this isolation allows him to be drawn into Fiona's twisted rites. Nonetheless, his ability to recognise how he is divided from those around him, as well as the fact that his separation is not supported by any institutional powers, allows him to make the choice to rejoin the world. He makes the original choice to divide himself from the world after he watches his father die and then goes downstairs where he observes "the silence of the mirror where there was no screaming, no weight pressing on top of him. Nor the terrible crack his father's head had made as he fell. In the mirror everything was ready for them to sit down and eat tea as usual."(22) The role of the mirror in his self-isolation also connects the story more closely with "The Dead" in which glass and reflections play an important role. Even in the end, when it seems that Gabriel may have made a connection to the world around him, he is watching it along with falling snow through the window. At the moment that Malcolm makes his decision to separate himself from the outside world, the narrative switches from third-person to the more distancing second (and this voice continues to be used to represent his perspective until he chooses to smash the glass).

His reflection and himself together, looking out for the first time. As though seeing the room through his reflection's eyes:

Everything in the kitchen happening as it should do. The plates laid out, the chairs in position, the two-bar fire, and you standing by yourself in front of the mirror. You can still hear your mother's screams but as they are on the outside now, they can no longer hurt you.
It is time to take your seat at the table and wait for her return.(23)

No theology but his own observation and imagination creates the world-beyond-the-mirror into which he chooses then to step. Later, he accepts his aunt's first inappropriate overtures as a further way to divide himself from the painful world:

She will unbutton her blouse and place your hand there. Warm and safe. No drowning can happen.(24)

The boy-narrator of "The Sisters" would likely still be estranged from others even if he were not friends with Father Flynn because of his studious nature and how seriously he takes himself. A more gregarious, popular boy would be unlikely to become friends with an ill, elderly priest; without these circumstances, there would have been no opportunity for Father Flynn to enact his corruption upon the boy, whether in terms of the sexual abuse the text only hints at or through his obscure scholastic questions which produce no understanding of religion other than a general awe for the authority of those who wield it. In the intertext then, isolation that causes corruption (as in the cases of Aunt Fiona and Father Flynn) is traceable to an institutional source while isolation that merely increases one's vulnerability to abuse (as in the cases of the boy-narrator and Malcolm) does not.

The boys are not identical in their isolation, however. The narrator of "The Sisters" is much forceful in separating himself from his family and their milieu, thinking of Old Cotter as a "[t]iresome old fool" and a "[t]iresome old red-nosed imbecile." Malcolm separates himself from his family and the world to avoid pain, but the boy-narrator expresses no such reason. He seems only to wish to hide himself when he crams his "mouth with stirabout" or when he states, "I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had not interested me."(25) As the boy-narrator acts this way while Old Cotter and Uncle Jack are discussing Father Flynn, the priest's institutional affiliation is implicated. Though the boy's isolation may not originate in the Church, the Church's influence upon it reduces his possibilities for escape and redemption, as the stories which follow his in Dubliners reflect precisely how difficult it will be for him to change. Malcolm has more space for redemption, which once again underscores the malign influence of institutions in the intertextual space between Joyce's and Butlin's fictions.

Still, at the end of Night Visits, redemption remains uncertain, and it is here that the book'sintertextuality with "The Sisters" becomes less important and an echo of the initial allusion to "The Dead" becomes more so. While Father Flynn's death means he cannot be redeemed and the boy-narrator at the end of "The Sisters" has all but vanished, giving no sign that he might escape the religious corruption and general paralysis from which the inhabitants of Joyce's Dublin suffer, Fiona is held in her sister's arms and Malcolm has literally shattered the glass that metaphorically isolated him.

When he turned around a moment later he saw his mother and Aunt Fiona coming down the stairs, his mother with her arm about his aunt's shoulders. Their adult unhappiness, their adult weariness were caught in the sunlight streaming through the broken window. Already he could feel the sun's warmth soothing him, like the touch of someone's hand.
He got to his feet, and began to make his way up towards them.(26)

The opening of of Butlin's book shares snow with end of "The Dead," but its conclusion shares the ambiguity (even as other elements of Night Visits support only the negative interpretation of that uncertain end). Indeed, just as the interpretation of Gabriel's final position and plans depends on one's interpretation of heading west, the meaning of the end of Night Visits depends on one's interpretation of Malcolm's movement towards Fiona and Margaret. Is he headed for their unhappiness, towards an end to isolation, or both? This ambiguity is necessary. If hope and redemption were certain, the personal and the familial would become institutionalised, like the annual gathering hosted by the Misses Morkin in "The Dead" which Gabriel finds unsatisfactory and like the care given by nursing home workers (such as Stella) who do not view their charges as fully human. Only so long as redemption remains uncertain may the corrupting influence of power and structure be avoided. Hope is only in the possibility of hope, and it may never be known as absolute, except perhaps from behind a glass.

Ultimately, an intertextual reading of Night Visits withthe two stories which serve as book ends to Dubliners does less to alter the way in which Butlin's novella is understood thematically (though it does emphasise certain elements) and more to suggest the way in which his book rereads Joyce's stories and thus the way in which it may be understood by the discourse community of Joyce scholars and enthusiasts. The ambiguity that concludes "The Dead" becomes itself a sign of hope and human connection. Moreover, intertextually, there is no question of blaming any particular religion for the isolation the characters experience. In Dubliners, Joyce deals with the effects of one religion only, Catholicism. In Night Visits, the religion which Aunt Fiona has followed goes unnamed, though given the story's location in Edinburgh and the mentions of ministers, a particularly conservative brand of Presbyterian seems likely. That her religion is not directly named and that the nursing home too is problematic means that Butlin's work in itself is more generally anti-institutional. Through references to "The Sisters" and "The Dead", he endorses a broader reading of Dubliners in which the city's paralysis stands more broadly for the effects of authority and hierarchy on societies in general, with Catholicism being the necessary specific authority given the class and location of the people about whom Joyce wrote. This reading reflects Joyce-the-exile's broader sense of the world and seems particularly appropriate given that he revised "The Sisters" extensively and wrote the entirety of "The Dead" while on the Continent.