"The End of Mr Y" is a book shrouded in mystery. Written by Thomas Lumas (the subject of Ariel Manto's PhD) who died not long after it's publication, the book has a reputation for being cursed and it is thought that no copies survive. So Ariel can't believe her eyes when she discovers a copy in a £50 box of books at a second hand book shop. Even though it uses up nearly all of the rest of her grant for the month, she has to buy it. The story centres around Mr Y's dicovery of the "Troposphere" a place from which you can enter other people's minds. But a page is missing. Soon Ariel finds her life spiralling out of control.

If I say that I wanted to enjoy this more than I did, it sounds as though I didn't like it, which is truly not the case. Definitely a page turner with some very original ideas from all over the place. Nonetheless, I frequently found the characters difficult to believe in and some aspects of the story just a little clunky - including the ending. I know that a lot of people have found this book thought provoking, but I'm afraid I didn't particularly - or no more than any other anyway. It was, however, a very entertaining holiday read. ( )

I'm really sorry I didn't like this one better. I was so looking forward to reading it after seeing the reviews and the premise of the story. I finally scrounged a copy off Book Mooch and dove in. It definitely started off grabbing my interest, but not very far in to it I found myself having to really push myself to continue. By the last third the story had peaked my interest again and I didn't have trouble finishing it.

So what didn't I like about it? Well, homeopathy plays a big role, and I suppose you can just chalk that up to the fantasy aspect of it. It features what struck me as a very unnecessary sex scene from the perspective of a mouse. And it gets way, way into metaphysics.

The book is very well written. The characters are intelligent, three dimensional and interesting. Some of them are people I'd probably hang out with if I met them. But most of them probably would want to have as little to do with me as I would with them.

The reference in another review to Being John Malkovich is right on (though I enjoyed that movie more than I did this book). If the tag line "If you knew this book was cursed, would you read it?" grabs your attention, but metaphysics isn't so much your thing, check out The Shadow of the Wind instead. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2009/09... ( )

Although clumsy at the start and in places where the author brings together characters for a philosophical discussion I found this an highly original book. I congratulate the author in making strong statements in a novel that is still highly readable. In fact any novel that discusses Derrida and the French school of Deconstructionists deserves to be read! ( )

The End of Mr Y is a strange book, which felt to me like a cross between Sophie's World, Alice in Wonderland, Being John Malkovich and a generic sci-fi thriller.

That's not a bad thing though, as it comes together in a thought provoking and very readable way, despite covering some very abstract ideas within the story. It's the story of a woman who finds a book, at heart, but this is almost incidental to the main plot, which I'm trying not to spoil in this review!

I liked it, but suspect that anyone looking for a light read will be disappointed. If you liked The Somnambulist, or any of the titles mentioned above, give it a go. ( )

I absolutely adore this book! First and foremost I HEART the cover with the black-edged pages. I know it's childish, but I first picked up the book because I found the cover really interesting (yes I'm a slave to good marketing, sue me). But I'm so glad I did.

First of all, the book was incredibly cleverly written. The story is about a woman attempting to complete her PhD on an obscure 19th century English writer who she is fascinated with. Meanwhile, her supervisor suddenly disappears, adding to the mystery around her subject matter. A legend surrounds her author that anyone who attempts to read his book, titled 'The End of Mr. Y' will disappear, and it was thought that there was only one copy of it in existence. Events in her otherwise uneventful life become curiouser and curiouser, forcing our heroine out of her otherwise monotonous life and causing her to ask questions that will at best give the reader a new outlook on life, and at worst turn them into a crowd of conspiracy theorists.

I believe that this book is a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Angels & Demons, a fantastic literary mystery, truly one of a kind. I can't wait to start her latest book, [Pop Co.], which I already have waiting for me in my apartment when I get back to college! ( )

A mind-blowing ride through cosmology, phenomenology, epistemology, theology, and no doubt many other -ologies I've missed. How can you not love a book that stars Apollo Smintheus, god of mice? It's amazing to me how a book like this can be embraced by the mainstream critics when it's so clearly science fiction, but more power to Thomas for pulling it off. ( )

Lotsa Derrida. Yessiree. ( )

Scarlett Thomas was named one of the twenty best young British writers by the Independent on Sunday in 2001 and Writer of the Year at the 2002 Elle Style Awards. After reading The End of Mr. Y, it's easy to understand why.

This book is no slow starter. Right away the reader is thrust into a tension-building scene which finds the main character, Ariel Manto, rushing out of her office as the ground shakes beneath her, just in time to see the next building collapse. The mystery element is introduced from the start too, as Ariel sneaks back into her building to get her keys and reveals that her office, is shared with Professor Saul Burlem, who has been missing since the first week she arrived. Burlem is the only person in the world who has done research on the author Thomas E. Lumas, one of Ariel's main subjects.

Tragedy surrounds Thomas E. Lumas. It was believed that one of his books, The End of Mr. Y, was cursed. The author died soon after writing it, along with everyone who was ever involved with it. Only one copy of the book exists, safely tucked into a bank vault in Germany. Imagine Ariel's surprise as she walks home from work that night and enters a used bookstore. While looking for more works by Thomas E. Lumas, the store assistant mentions that the name sounds familiar and swears she has a copy of the book. Ariel can't believe her luck as a box is brought out, recently bought at auction, and tucked inside is a copy of the novel.

What follows is an adventure which is nothing less than spectacular. The reader gets to read the cursed novel along with Ariel, while at the same time, learning about her life, her bond with her neighbour, the affair with a college professor and her financial struggles. At the end of the book, she is troubled. There is a page missing and it's obvious that it was torn out. Why would it be removed? What did it say?

When her building resumes normal day to day business, she returns to find that two people from the collapsed building will now be sharing her office. In the process of making space for them, she is packing the books which belong to Burlem. As she does so, a piece of paper flutters out of a book. It's a page. No. It's THE page. Why did Burlem have it? Why did he have a copy of The End of Mr. Y? Where is he?

Ariel sets out to find the answers to these and many more questions and ventures into the Troposphere - A place where she can travel through time and space by using the thoughts of others. What she finds inside is beyond imagination, and while she begins exploring in awe and wonder, she soon finds herself within a nightmare that may end up costing Ariel her life.

Where do I even begin with this book? It's simply brilliant. I picked it up and was hooked from the very start. The author has a way of drawing the reader into the book, even when just sharing details of Ariel's day to day life. The characters are vivid, realistic and very easy to connect with.

The story itself is a perfect blend of present and past, and after reading it, it was easy to see why Jonathan Coe stated:

"Not only will you have a great time reading this book, but you will finish it a cleverer person than when you started."

This book explores so many theories about science, faith, conciousness, death and more. It's a book that will excite the senses, inspire the imagination, and tease the intellect.

I loved this book.

Author's website: http://www.bookgirl.org/ ( )

This is a very complex read with more layers than an Arctic explorer. Some of the concepts went wafting over my head and at times I struggled to keep up but hopefully I’m not alone in this...? Despite the deep concepts, I still really enjoyed it. The author has a very readable writing style which even though I was confused at times, made it easy to persevere. I’ll certainly read more by this author - will just have to keep taking the smart pills. ( )

A definite "curate's egg" this - "The End of Mr Y" aims to combine a story with a commentary on science and metaphysics. The story works well - it's rather eclectic, but it starts off well told and fairly compulsive. You feel a bit let down at the end though when the implied climax fails to materialise.

At the same time the poor science, cod philosophy and such grated and detracted from what would otherwise be an extremely readable book. One gets the impression that Ms. Thomas did a great deal of research for this book, wants to make sure her readers know that she did but she fails to really understand the concepts that she's read up on. For me, this really jarred as what seemed to be an attempt to ground the story in some real science actually had the adverse effect of making things seem too unreal (which is something of an achievement for a book set in a 'dreamworld'!).

Friends who've read it seem polarised and either class this as a good read or a bad read. I'd have to conclude that it's somewhere in the middle; good storytelling flawed by poor execution. ( )

I am oscillating between a 7 and an 8. Not what I was expecting from the cover and the blurb, but a good read. At times a bit heavy as I tried to get my head around some of the scientific questions posed, but what a great idea. Great and scary, the idea of the Troposphere really makes you think. I just didn't really connect with Ariel, she is spiky, feisty, damaged, but sometimes I found her too alienating. ( )

I really enjoyed this intelligent and wide ranging novel - lots and lots of interesting ideas. It makes you think about all sorts of wide ranging ideas from science and philosophy (check the number of tags I've used!) and what they may mean about the nature of reality. At the same time its a fairly fast paced adventure. The use of first person sometimes grated on me a little, but mostly worked in the context of the book. In a few places I thought it over reached itself a bit - slightly contrived discussions to introduce/explain the philosophical ideas, and I wasn't wholy convinced by the ending, but as a whole a really good read.

I loved the quote in it (p. 43) 'Maybe that's where human society is now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century: not even wrong.' ( )

This is a bit like the classic 'Punch' cartoon.,'The Curate's Egg' "BISHOP - I'm afraid you've got a bad egg,Mr Jones". CURATE - "Oh,no my lord,I assure you! Parts of it are excellent !"
It begins well,with the central character discovering in an obscure little bookshop,a rare,indeed almost unique book - "The End of Mr.Y" in fact. This she buys for a very low price. The crux of the matter is that with the help of this book she is able to time and indeed mind travel through the Troposphere. She had some weird and wonderful adventures on the way,not least in meeting and being helped by Apollo Smintheus (a mouse-god) and taking a journey on a somewhat unusual train.
Now this is fine and I like the premise.It is worth 5 stars of anybody's money. However I must deduct marks as follows. A minus of one star for tacky sex scenes and a minus of one star for pages and pages (which I found myself skipping) of scientific explanations which were totally uninteresting. Could I am sure do much better than this.
So 'A Curates Egg' sort of book. ( )

I was drawn to 'The End of Mr Y' by the back cover blurb, which promises 'a thrilling adventure of love, sex, death, and time-travel', and I wasn't disappointed. In addition to the ripping yarn, though, I also got some fabulously rich characters, and a good dose of philosophy.

The first part of the book established Ariel's ordinary life - ordinary in the extreme, a little bleak around the edges - and when she falls down the rabbit hole, the idiosyncratic, observational style continues, forcing the reader to experience some of Ariel's sense of disorientation.

First person is often tricky, but is used here to excellent effect, drawing us into the internal world of graduate student Ariel Manto, first as she faces an unexpectedly difficult day on campus, and then as her worldview is permanently altered as a result reading a rare - allegedly cursed - novel by the Victorian scientist who is the subject of her research.

With its romance-in-the-literature-department credentials, it's a little like A.S. Byatt's Possession, if it had taken a step to the side and entered the Matrix, and would probably appeal to steampunk and speculative fiction readers, and anyone who has ever studied literary criticism, philosophy, or taken an interest in theoretical sciences. It also provides an interesting introduction to the theories that it's characters try and use to understand and manipulate the world they discover through the cursed book.

However, it is more than a novel of ideas - it's both a thought experiment, and a real story, populated with characters who, even if they're only on the page for short periods, have an emotional resonance. The reader can believe continue to exist when they're 'off screen', and they all have their own motivations for their actions, beyond just helping Ariel and the plot along. Ariel's depressed upstairs neighbour, and her supervisor, on the run from the ideas he unearthed, are just as convincingly drawn as Apollo Smintheus, god of mice, and the more threatening denizens of the alternate-world she discovers.

The sense of confusion and threat is genuine, and as a result the action plot is engaging, and meshes well with the emotional, character led elements of the book.

A very enjoyable read, although it needs reading ( )

Okayish on thbe whole and generally quite readable. could have done without all the pretentious-sounding philosophical/metaphisical stuff though. ( )

Full marks for ambition: no doubt about it. Scarlett Thomas, whose name sounds like a pseudonym but apparently isn't, shows real imagination and no small portion of erudition in constructing the world of Ariel Manto (whose name really is a pseudonym, and an anagram at that) and the "Troposphere" she happens upon when researching a long dead and forgotten Victorian mystic called Thomas Lumas, in which much of the action - and philosophical musing - comprising The End of Mr. Y happens.

Yes, you read that right: Thomas combines a conventional "confront/defeat the monster" plot, which could almost earn a Hollywood treatment, with some thickly-laid on metaphysics which, even in the hands of the Wachowski brothers (to whose films this book bears only the flimsiest of similarities) decidedly would not especially as, ultimately, Hollywood-grade plotting loses out to post-structuralist posing some way before the end. Now you don't see *that* happen too often, so three cheers for that. And in parts it is a joyous, righteous, pseudo-intellectual romp.

But in others it's just pseudo-intellectual: the means by which Thomas seeks to bring about her epistemological triumph over the (disappointly thinly drawn) bad dudes displays nothing like the lightness of touch such a manoeuvre requires. For one thing, she doesn't pull her philosophical punches at the slightest hint of stage 1 brain in a vat metaphysics, as a less ambitious (but more successful) writer might. Instead, she indulges on long ruminations, delivered in improbably lengthy and articulate chunks, about more obscure and difficult thinkers like Derrida, Baudrilliard, Heidegger and Husserl, with whom she should not expect the greater part of her (or any) audience to be well acquainted. Obliged, therefore, to indulge in exposition she elects to explain the salient insights of these thinkers through implausible conversations between characters who, if attention were being paid to plot arc and character development, would have better things to be thinking and talking about. Alas when she does have her characters do something else, it invariably involves copulating, which, given the narrative constraints she has imposed, is about as unlikely as casual dialogue about literary theory and to my reading seemed quite unneccessarily grittily depicted. As a way to give this novel an edge the fornicatory aspect seemed forced, gratuitous and, frankly, dull - like the intracies of Heidegger's dasein, a personal obsession Scarlett Thomas might have been better advised to keep to herself.

For all that, when she does allow the plot to dictate the pace it picks up mightily and zips along. The characters face some neatly constructed conundrums, crises and paradoxes which flow from and support her epistemological point. The writing is playful and, at times, neatly constructed: there are in-jokes and word plays throughout, and I don't pretend to have got anything like all of them.

In the end - though it may pain Ms Thomas to hear it - the cod philosophy can be safely dispensed with and the slightly icky bonking glossed over, since the wonderful contrivance of Thomas Lumas (itself a self-referential play on words, I suppose) and his Troposphere with its console, its choices, the mouse god Apollo Smintheus and his misfiring scooter carry the day, no matter how incoherent the whole may ultimately be. ( )

This is an amazing book which manages to encompass quantum theory, homeopathy, Derrida, Hedigger, Samuel Butler and quite an interesting mystery within its 500 odd pages. As a result its really hard to sum this book up, except to say that this is a book that probably needs to be read several times. ( )

From the first chapter this book grabs you and takes you on a wild journey that is closer to real reality than reality itself - great job !!

Where science meets humanities and poses more questions than it offers answers. A frighteningly believable fantasy that just makes you wonder if you should try that potion. Ariel is the quintessential redhead that surpasses all redheads that have gone before her. A pioneering traveler who challenges the boundaries of the physical world and who takes the ultimate choice on the edge of life and death. ( )

A potion described in a rare book allows Ariel Manto to travel between people's minds in a fast paced, thought provoking read that's peppered with poetic wit. Frequently though Ariel's tasks seem like lacklustre quests in the early chapters of a colourful RPG, and Scarlett is not quite as capable of blending narrative and speculative or scientific discourse as say Pynchon or Coupland. ( )

Surreal but fascinating. It´s fiction, not philosophy, but it manages to weave in philosophy, religion, quantum physics, relativity, thought experiments, literature, alternative universes, the big bang and much more. Mostly it´s quite fast-paced and engrossing.

The hints of dark sex in the story are intriguing, giving insights into the main character and a touch of gritty reality without having to go into too much sordid detail.

I find the ending rather weak. This is perhaps partly inherent in the story itself - it´s quite difficult to imagine what the ending could have been without some sort of anticlimax. It´s also a problem with any story which is very effectively narrated in the first person but which reaches an ending which apparently precludes the narrator from ever getting the story to the reader. There is an epilogue, which is often used to do this, but in this case wasn´t.

But all in all, a very good read. ( )

This is my first Scarlett Thomas book and I found it to be engaging and well-written. The End of Mr Y is the story of Ariel Manto and her search for the cursed book of Thomas Lumas. There are a lot of big subjects to contend with – from philosophy and advanced science, but you don’t have to understand everything to move on with the narrative – certainly my knowledge of quantum physics is poor, but I was able to understand everything. I like the inclusion of Lumas’ “The End of Mr Y” within the story, as it helped to highlight how one man’s obsession can ruin lives. I struggled to empathise with Ariel, even though she’d obviously had a troubled up-bringing – her back story seemed clinical, but perhaps the author was attempting to show how Ariel had compartmentalised her life. I didn’t enjoy the ending – it didn’t seem to work. Overall, a great book to read and make you think. ( )

As for what I thought of the plot, my first reaction and the only 3 words that have been sitting in this review’s draft version for the last week or so, are, ‘Hmm… Not sure…’ and just over a week later, that pretty much, still sums up my thoughts.

[Read full review, on my blog.]
( )

Time travel and quantum physics, philosophy and mind reading, sex and rare books, what is it not to like?. Although some of these subjects could put some readers off, this book is certainly not as ‘heavy’ as you might think. If you are a fan of Umberto Eco I believe you will enjoy The End of Mr Y; it is a pleasure to read, a fascinating narrative filled with irony and plot twists. I read this book in hours-long reading sessions, just like I did with any of Eco’s books.
The End of Mr Y is a very clever book, engaging and utter fun. ( )