Horror Book Reviews
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Title: The End of Mr. Y |
Review of The End of Mr. Y
- A cursed book. A missing professor. Some nefarious men in gray suits. And a dreamworld called the Troposphere?ÂAriel Manto has a fascination with nineteenth-century scientistsâespecially Thomas Lumas and The End of Mr. Y, a book no one alive has read. When she mysteriously uncovers a copy at a used bookstore, Ariel is launched into an adventure of science and faith, consciousness and death, space and time, and everything in between.ÂSeeking answers, Ariel follows in Mr. Yâs footsteps: She swallows a tincture, stares into a black dot, and is transported into the Troposphereâa wonderland where she can travel through time and space using the thoughts of others. There she begins to understand all the mysteries surrounding the book, herself, and the universe. Or is it all just a hallucination?ÂWith The End of Mr. Y, Scarlett Thomas brings us another fast-paced mix of popular culture, love, mystery, and irresistible philosophical adventure.
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Comments for The End of Mr. Y
- Posted on 2008-10-29
Reports of Mystery's End somewhat exaggerated
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.
Olly Buxton
Score: 4
- Posted on 2008-09-25
An odd book
This book starts well but oh my, bogs down quickly. Confused, pedantic, and eventually, tiresome. Apparently the author shares the British horror of those wicked American FBI men, not to mention a proper PETA viewpoint towards animals used in medical experiments, and a grand respect for modern philosophical theories, the cloudier the better. Cute mouse on the cover, though.
Hope
Score: 3
- Posted on 2008-09-04
How to alienate half your readership in one fell swoop
The End Of Mr Y is 500 pages of non stop nothingness. There's a few weird moments. There's a few random moments. And in between all that? It's virtually unreadable. I finished the book, without understanding what had just happened. I actually threw it to the other side of the couch, I was that frustrated.
The book had so much promise. My dad bought it, and I insisted it reading first. I have now put him off reading the book entirely. The one brain cell that I possess spontaneously combusted reading this. It's way too wordy - and by that I mean, I was reading it, and thinking that I would have to reach for a dictionary for most of it. Or, there was a simpler way of writing the word. There's no need to choose the fanciest word in the dictionary.
The book is full of science, paradoxes, metaphysics, relativity, and other such nonsense which I didn't really have a clue about. Finishing off the book, I was constantly stopping to ask my dad what this meant, and what that meant, and reading bits out to him. But once I stopped, I found it very hard to get back into the book. For example, when I stopped reading at the end of a lunch break, I'd completely lost the thread of the book by the time I came back to start reading it again. That's not good.
Should I have stopped reading sooner, and just given up??? Perhaps I should have done, because it did feel like a complete waste of a couple of weeks (yes I know WEEKS.) But I just had to find out what exactly was going to happen.
The End of Mr Y is a total mind ****, and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. Give it a go, and let me know if you can understand it. Simplify it for me, maybe then I'll understand exactly what went on.
Score: 1
- Posted on 2008-07-13
Do you believe in curses? Only in my dreams!
This is a compendium of oddities and influences that, bizarrely, works to great effect. Imagine Woody Allen had written the screen play of The Matrix heavily influenced by The Wizard of Oz and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland just after reading Einstein's seminal 1905 paper on Special Relativity and you'll get some idea of its contents and storyline.
I'm not sure if Thomas read Woody's story The Kugelmass Episode in advance of writing The End of Mr Y but there are some interesting similarities not least the fact that Thomas' heroine, PhD student, Ariel Manto, having found a rare copy of the book, The End of Mr Y, proceeds to follow instructions she finds therein that allow her to enter another dimension known as the Troposphere where she meets all kinds of weird and wonderful characters including a beneficent `rabbit god' called Apollo Smintheus.
If this all sounds a bit much reserve judgement until you've tried it as it is well worth the effort. Apparently, it's been referred to as `chick lit for nerds': a better description might be a novel of ideas for slappers - get to about page 30 and you might see what I mean. For all that it is entertaining, funny, intelligent, well written, immensely engaging and beats the pants off what, laughingly, passes for literary fiction these days with the so-called literati!
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-06-07
Best novel I have read in decades
This is a rollicking good read, with so many elements to entertain: an engaging heroine, intelligent musings, mice, teenagers, romance, sinister CIA agents and dirty sex.
The opening seems somewhat surreal, with a university building disappearing into a hole which has suddenly opened up beneath it. Normality is soon restored, and we are soon engaged in the somewhat sad, hungry and sordid life of poor graduate student Ariel.
However, the initial impression of surrealism returns, as at the core of this book is an astonishing idea concerning the nature of reality:
I imagine that few of us spend much time contemplating creation, existence and the reason for religion, yet this book has one questioning their very nature long after it is finished.
I notice that several reviewers seemed dissatisfied with the ending of this book. I cannot agree: given all that has gone before, the ending cements Ariel's unusual interpretation of reality. While the ending might seem glib, I also agree with Scarlett Thomas, who sees the book as a Tragedy as much as a Romance.
Score: 5
