The End of Mr. Y (Paperback)

by Scarlett Thomas (Author)
Key Phrases: fairground doctor, milky images, cursed book, Apollo Smintheus, Project Starlight, Little Will (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In Thomas's dense, freewheeling novel, Ariel Manto, an oversexed renegade academic, stumbles across a cursed text, which takes her into the Troposphere, a dimension where she can enter the consciousness, undetected, of other beings. Thomas first signals something is askew even in Ariel's everyday life when a university building collapses; soon after, Ariel discovers her intellectual holy grail at a used book shop: a rare book with the same title as the novel, written by an eccentric 19th-century writer interested in "experiments of the mind." The volume jump-starts her doctoral thesis, but her adviser disappears. And when Ariel follows a recipe in the book, she finds herself in deep trouble in the Troposphere. Her young ex-priest love interest may be too late to save her. Thomas blithely references popular physics, Aristotle, Derrida, Samuel Butler and video game shenanigans while yoking a Back to the Future–like conundrum to a gooey love story. The novel's academic banter runs the gamut from intellectually engaging to droning; this journey to the "edge of consciousness" is similarly playful but less accessible than its predecessor, PopCo. (Oct.)
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From Booklist
British author Thomas bites off a bit more than she can chew in this novel incorporating time travel, Derrida, and the dangers of sadistic trysts. Strange things keep happening to British university lecturer Ariel Manto. First her supervisor disappears; then she discovers the rarest of rare books, The End of Mr. Y, at a secondhand bookshop. The tome was penned by Thomas Lumas, a nineteenth-century scientist who, as luck would have it, is the subject of Ariel's dissertation. (The book tells the tale of a man who swallows a tincture, stares into a black dot, and winds up in a place called the Troposphere, where he travels space and time through others' minds.) Bored and befuddled by real life, Ariel mimics the author's eerie experiment, with mixed results. (On her first trip, she melds minds with a randy rodent and a psychotic cat.) Like her previous novel, PopCo (2005), Thomas' mildly amusing second offering aspires to be both wonky and hip: her protagonist obsesses over philosophical matters one moment, her lamentable love life the next. Chick lit for nerds. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books; 1 edition (October 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156031612
• ISBN-13: 978-0156031615
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #147,535 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EEK! A mouse!, October 5, 2006

By	Rebecca Ann "macychick" (MA) - See all my reviews

I'll be honest: I was initially drawn to this book because of the cute little mouse on the front cover. I picked it up and read the back. It said in huge letters: IF YOU KNEW THIS BOOK WAS CURSED, WOULD YOU READ IT? Intrigued, I read the rest of the blurb and discovered it was about a woman, Ariel, who read a book that was supposedly cursed and wound up lost in an alternate level of consciousness where she could read others' minds. Wow! Now I was really intrigued!
As soon as I had the book in my hands, I couldn't wait to read it and find out if the book really was cursed.The book-within-a-book that Ariel reads may be cursed and it may not be, but I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't read it.
However, Scarlett Thomas's novel is definetely cursed. Each page of it will literally haunt and possess you. As you read it, you will become so absorbed in it that you will lose awareness of everything else around you.
You will stay up for hours after your bedtime trying to solve the many mysteries that lie within the multi-layered plots of the book. You will find yourself asking deep, profound questions, such as: Is there a God? How did the universe begin? Are there other universes out there that we aren't aware of? What are thoughts made of? Are thoughts tangible? Are we all connected somehow by the tangled web of thoughts we weave? Can we read people's minds and thoughts? Can others read our minds? What would it be like if I turned into a mouse? (I kid you not about the last one!) And when you finally go to bed, your dreams will be possessed by the labyrinths and questions of the book, and you will find yourself trying to make sense of it all. Even after you have finished the book, it will continue to haunt your mind. You will be filled with an insatiable desire to aquire all of Scarlett Thomas's other writings and read them!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful novel!, October 12, 2006

By	armchairinterviews.com (Minnesota) - See all my reviews

Ariel Manto is a PhD candidate at an English University where she is working on a thesis based on the works of an obscure author from the late 19th century. Her thesis advisor disappeared a year before the novel's action begins--on the day that a campus building collapses over a long unused railroad tunnel that runs beneath the campus.

Ariel lives a rather hand-to-mouth life, in a seedy apartment building with inadequate heat, on a budget that makes Ramen noodles a feast, and in the company of an odd assortment of characters. On the day of the building collapse, she has to walk home through an unfamiliar neighborhood, wanders into a used bookshop, and finds the elusive last book by the subject of her thesis, The End of Mr. Y.

At this point, her somewhat unconventional life takes a turn for the bizarre, and the reader should strap on the roller coaster seat belt and hold on, hands inside the car please.

Ariel begins reading the book, discovers the secret that so many have tried to surpress, and--very much like Alice down the rabbit hole--follows the clues, and formulas, and the recipes in the book to discover the secret of Mr. Y.

It's a fantastical book, but Thomas makes Ariel's strange journey, the people she meets and flees from, the atmosphere and location of her journeys, all of what she experiences in the course of the novel, move from one point to the next in a fashion that carries the reader along--a little breathlessly and mouth agape, perhaps--but anxious to see what will happen next.

Thomas is a skilled writer, and she knows how to pace the novel in a way that keeps the reader from being overwhelmed by the strangeness of the tale. Ariel is refreshingly candid about her history and her unfortunate tendency to wander down some unsavory romantic lanes. She's a forward character, technology-obsessed, casual about relationships, drifting a bit--and keenly observant of others.

Armchair Interviews says: If you're looking for an exciting story with a fantastical twist, dive into the world of Ariel Manto and The End of Mr. Y.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If You Knew a Book was Cursed, would You Read it?, November 2, 2006

By	Tiffany Ann (Black Diamond Bay) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

"Smart, stylish and dizzying... a breakneck thriller of a plot that includes collapsing buildings, renegade C.I.A. agents and debauched sex." That's what the New York Times Review of books had to say about this book. With that kind of recommendation from them, I had to give it a read and let me tell you, I was not disappointed.

Ariel Manto is a graduate student in England who is doing a dissertation on Thomas Lumas, a nineteenth-century scientist who penned an impossible to find book called, "The End of Mr. Y." It seems the book is cursed and all who have read it have died shortly after. No problem for Ariel, because the book is impossible to find. Or is it?

A year earlier, Professor Burlem, the professor who was supposed to me mentoring Ariel, mysteriously disappeared, but Ariel continued doggedly on, hoping that someday he will return. Then one day, she finds the next best thing to finding her missing prof, she finds the book Lumas wrote in a secondhand bookstore. If anything will help her with her dissertation, this is it. However, there is that pesky curse.

It seems that Lumas, the book's author, swallowed a tincture he made up and after staring into a black dot, was whisked away to a place called the Troposphere, where he not only zipped through space, but other minds as well. Sounds a bit like LSD to me.

Anyway, Ariel defies the curse, opens the book and follows in Lumas' footsteps, tincture, black dot and all, and she too crosses over into the Troposphere, where she can seek the answers to questions that bother her some, like whatever happened to Professor Burlem, are there more dimensions, are dimensions real or is it all just an hallucination.

Whether illusion or real, Ariel runs afoul of some people who don't exactly want this Troposphere business getting around. They have guns and go after those who get into it. And Ariel got in.

This is a mindbender of a book. A thriller that is a real class act. The story is told from Ariel's point of view and told so well, that I times I actually thought I was Ariel, that I was were she was, and that is the mark of truly outstanding fiction. If you're into mysteries, thrillers, scifi or horror than this book is for you. You won't soon be forgetting it. Brrr, it's good.