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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 Runes 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 the 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.
About the 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 (2020), The Runes Have Been Cast (2022) and Tom's Version (2024).
