To The Last Page

If it were any other writer, you would consider Tom’s Version a follow up to the author's last book, The Runes Have Been Cast , but Robert Irwin is an unusual case. His books, from The Arabian Nightmare onward, are intrigued with the idea of life as a story: as the book before the last made explicit in its title, My Life is like a Fairy Tale . Seen in that light, The Runes Have Been Cast , which was by no means straightforward itself (although less convoluted than some of Irwin's work) almost becomes enfolded within Tom's Version , a story within a story. Or maybe I'm just over-thinking it. Nonetheless the clues and references are scattered throughout Tom's Version . Now in 1970, following the late 1960s' story of the two Oxford academics in The Runes Have Been Cast , at the end of chapter one here, the narrator observes that " London was so full of stories " and the encounter group that Tom joins sounds promising of new experiences “ in the City of ...

I hadn't heard the term campus novel until on the same day I started reading The Runes Have Been Cast by coincidence I also read a review that used the term in respect of RF Kuang’s latest book Katabasis - but coincidences seem to abound when you enter the mysterious worlds of Robert Irwin. The Oxford academic setting and the search to understand the workings and secrets of the world here also reminds me of Javier Marías’ Tu rostro mañana trilogy, which also has an old master with a history in the war who pulls strings, but although Le Carré is also referenced here as with Marías, it's more JRR Tolkien and runes that hint at more esoteric knowledge in The Runes Have Been Cast . It's fascinating to see the differing approaches that these two writers take, showing that there is much to be explored in this subject. There are also two ways of acquiring knowledge and absorbing it in Robert Irwin's book, leading to two different fates. Set in the late 1950s/early 60s, frie...

Books of the Year 2020 Like any personal best of list, the selections are inevitably limited by what one was able to have the time to read, watch or listen to, and it can in no way be definitive or comprehensive reflection of what was the best out there. As far as books go, there are plenty of literary awards with panels to choose from a wider selection, but for a single reader, the time invested means that you tend to stick with genres you are familiar with and writers who never let you down. Occasionally however, books come your way that are a delightful surprise precisely because you weren't expecting it. This year I read and reviewed 72 books for various places, of which 49 were English language novels, 6 were in French, 2 were in Spanish and 15 were graphic novels. My favourite 5 books (and one graphic novel) consequently consist of three favourite writers who didn't disappoint this year and two authors new to me in the literary genre that I wasn't expecting to impress...

What we think of as reality is overrated, and stories, dreams, fantasy and fairy-tales are very much a necessity and a part of our lives. That’s a theme that you will find in all of Robert Irwin’s fiction, and it’s a big enough theme to encompass an astonishing variety of situations, from the inescapable story-within-a story traps of The Arabian Nightmare , the hippy drug-tripping other realities sequences of Satan Wants Me , to the Surrealists of Exquisite Corpse and most recently in life/death blurring of reality and legend during the War of the Roses in Wonders Will Never Cease . In his latest masterpiece of fictional storytelling, Irwin considers the uneasy blend of reality with the fantastical in the form of classic German silent cinema of the 1920s, the early talkies and distortion of reality in the propaganda films of the Nazis. The variety of Irwin’s range is very much in keeping with his consistent worldview (one undoubtedly informed by his expertise and academic studies of T...

The novels of Robert Irwin are indeed wonderful things and it’s good to see that they haven’t ceased yet. All stories must eventually come to an end however, and not all of them end as we might like, but there will always be new stories and many more wonders to discover as we go through life. That in essence is what Wonders Will Never Cease is all about, but with it being a Robert Irwin novel and with the story here set in the War of the Roses period of English history, there are many other philosophical and esoteric matters to consider in a rich work that is itself filled with magic and wonder. A historian specialising in Oriental studies, Irwin made his literary mark with the labyrinthine horror fantasy The Arabian Nightmare in 1983, but each of his successive novels have continued in one way or another to explore the idea of life transformed. Sometimes it’s through mental illness ( The Limits of Vision ), in the world of the surrealists ( Exquisite Corpse ), through mind-altering ...