- The End of Mr. Y
infobox Book |
name = The End of Mr. Y
orig title =
translator =
author =Scarlett Thomas
cover_artist =
country =Great Britain
language = English
series =
genre =Novel
publisher =Harcourt Books
release_date = 2006
media_type = Print
pages = 416 pp
isbn = ISBN 0156031612
preceded_by =PopCo (2004)
followed_by ='The End of Mr. Y' is a novel by British author
Scarlett Thomas . It tells us about Ariel Manto, a lonely PhD student, who has been doing research on 19th century writer Thomas Lumas when she enters a second-hand bookshop and stumbles upon an extremely rare novel by him, The End of Mr. Y, first published in 1893. The book is rumoured to be cursed, and anyone who has ever read it has been found dead not long afterwards.The novel tells how to enter the Troposphere – a place where all consciousness is connected, and you can surf other people’s thoughts. Ariel wonders if this could be true - it is in a novel, after all.She would rather have fiction than reality – which is just poverty and bad sex – anyway. And she wants to know everything, including everything about the Troposphere, and whether or not such a thing could exist. But soon she’s running for her life, surfing both fiction and reality as she tries to escape from the people who want her secrets.
Ariel Manto is an anagram of I am not real. The book mentions her surname is both fictitious and based on an anagram.
As has
Janette Turner Hospital , the novel explores the relationships between quantum physics and post-modernist and deconstructionist theory. The description of the Troposphere has been compared to the novels ofNeal Stephenson andWilliam Gibson , and shares similarities toThe Matrix . [http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/entertainment/book-review-the-end-of-mr-y-scarlett-thomas/1228396.aspx]The End of Mr. Y is a
thought experiment wrapped in a contemporary adventure novel that asks questions about thought, language, destiny and the very limits of being and time.It was [http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/show/feature/orange-scarlett-thomas long-listed] for the
Orange Prize for Fiction in 2008.External links
* [http://www.theendofmry.com Official homepage of "The End of Mr. Y"]
* [http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2006_09_009907.php Bookslut review of "The End of Mr. Y"]
* [http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/thomass/endmry.htm "Complete Review's" collation of reviews of "The End of Mr. Y"]
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