This is the story of a story that plays out in real life. Tom is a stock controller. Though management of the shelves kept him busy in the daytime, his nights were frightful. Again and again he dreamt of guns, conjuring tricks, car chases, burials, disinterments, Martian landscapes and Molly. Tom is new to the Story as it was known to the sinister crew who first appeared in The Ruins Have Been Cast. They make their reappearance in this new novel... Molly is a hoplophiliac, Quentin is the sort of person who knows what a hoplophiliac is (someone who likes the use of guns in sex), Lancelyn is terrified of women, Jaimie has committed murder in order to understand what it is like to be evil, Ferdie is a conjuror with bad breath, Bernard is an expert on ghost stories, Mortimer is a thug who works at the The Times Literary Supplement. But Tom is just so ordinary (apart from his visions of Fairyland). Hovering in background are the ghostly presences of St Ignatius of Loyola, St Joseph of Copertino, Robert Louis Stevenson and M.R. James. Tom's Version is a lament for the sixties and then a mad race towards old age and death. To fans of Robert Irwin and dark academia. AUTHOR: Robert Irwin (born 1946) is a novelist, historian, critic and scholar. He is a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of ten novels: The Arabian Nightmare (1983), The Limits of Vision (1986), The Mysteries of Algiers (1988), Exquisite Corpse (1995), Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh (1997), Satan Wants Me (1999) Wonders Will Never Cease (2016), My Life is Like a Fairy Tale (2019), The Runes Have Been Cast (2021) and Tom's Version (2023). All his novels have enjoyed substantial publicity and commercial success although he is best known for The Arabian Nightmare which has been translated into twenty languages and is considered by many critics to be one of the great literary fantasy novels of the twentieth century.
Industry Reviews
"...characteristically witty glance back to the 1960s."
- Times Literary Supplement
"There is much fun to be had in these pages.. and the novel ends with a deftly executed twist of perspective... It is a book haunted by many earlier writers but it is Irwin's own antic voice which proves to be the most memorable element." - JS Barnes in The Literary Review
"This book, in a way, is a follow-up to Irwin's The Runes Have Been Cast, in that key characters from that book are key characters in this book. However, this book very much stands on its own and you do not have to read The Runes Have Been Cast to appreciate it. Anything relevant from that book is explained in this one... It is all enormous fun as Irwin enjoys mocking all and sundry and giving us a somewhat improbable and complicated plot. If only the real world could be non-fiction says Mortimer Salter the TLS fiction editor. Fortunately it is not." - John Alvey in The Modern Novel
"Tom's Version, his 10th novel, talks of edgy things - from abusive relationships to narcotics and sexual power games - but with a jovial, almost cosy air that suggests this is all now second nature for the 77-year-old author...Tom's Version is in many ways a book about books, with all the erudite insularity that entails. For all its esoteric trappings, there's nothing especially high-minded about this energetic romp at its core, which I mean in a good way." - Noel Gardner in Buzz Magazine
