A book…
The End of Mr Y
A heroine…
Ariel Manto, perpetual PhD candidate (impoverished)
A curse…
mysterious deaths & disappearances
A portal…
into psychokinetic metaspace
A race…
against (or possibly around) time; outcome to determine the fate of humanity
This isn’t real life.
Real life is regularly running out of money, and then food. Real life is having no proper heating. Real life is physical. Give me books instead: give me the invisibility of the contents of books, the thoughts, the ideas, the images.
Let me become part of a book.
‘A masterpiece…a brilliant, engaging story.’
‘A cracking good yarn fizzing with intelligence.’
‘Exhilarating.’
‘Smart, stylish, and dizzying…A wholly enchanting alternate universe.’
‘I read this book quickly, obsessively…I just loved reading this book more than doing just about anything else.’
‘The End of Mr Y is an elegant construction which reminds us that a magician’s book is a “grimoire” and that the organising principle of the world of thought is grammar; and that glamour, even the seedy glamour of Ariel’s world, is utter enchantment.’
‘Thomas works demanding subjects into her novel, cushioning their potentially deadening impact with controlled humour and a questing intelligence.’
‘This wholly original, genre-bending mind-trip of a novel has been described as destined to be a cult classic. I hope not—it deserves a wider readership than that.‘
‘Would be worth a read simply because it’s so different. But add some beautiful writing and an ingenious premise, and you have a truly absorbing book.’
‘Scarlett Thomas has stuffed The End of Mr Y with more ideas and inventiveness than you’ll find in a dozen comparable novels. …a breathlessly brainy adventure packed with sex and conceptual wonders.‘