false <![CDATA[The End of Mr. Y]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171254475m/93436.jpg 93436 8 <div>A cursed book. A missing professor. Some nefarious men in gray suits. And a dreamworld called the Troposphere? </div><div> </div><div>Ariel Manto has a fascination with nineteenth-century scientists&#8212;especially Thomas Lumas and <i>The End of Mr. Y, </i>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. </div><div> </div><div>Seeking answers, Ariel follows in Mr. Y&#8217;s footsteps: She swallows a tincture, stares into a black dot, and is transported into the Troposphere&#8212;a 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? </div><div> </div><div>With <i>The End of Mr. Y, </i>Scarlett Thomas brings us another fast-paced mix of popular culture, love, mystery, and irresistible philosophical adventure. </div> 1535663 book 2 10 2006 The End of Mr. Y total:1020|5:294|4:393|3:221|2:77|1:35| 1020 3894 1604 247 5 10 false false Tue Sep 25 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 17 12:33:13 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 17 12:34:44 -0700 2008
I re...more...]]> 5 7 false false Wed Jan 02 06:05:06 -0800 2008 Sun Sep 09 21:20:40 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 11 18:43:30 -0700 2007
I'm really not sure what to say about this novel. I think people that like House of Leaves would probably like it for sim...more...]]> 2 5 false false Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sun Jun 03 21:41:47 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 03 21:42:41 -0700 2007 PopCo, I found this both fascinating and frustrating. Thomas definitely achieves something really special with her ability to make her writing intensely cerebral (some of my favorite parts of Mr. Y were the digressions into quantum physics and other brain-stretching topics) while at th...more...]]> 4 3 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Oct 26 06:53:24 -0700 2007 Fri Oct 26 07:15:32 -0700 2007
The plot is simple-- a grad student stumbles across an extremely rare and purportedly cursed book, reads it, and discovers another world, a world 'made up of thought' which she calls the Troposphere.

The...more...]]> 2 5 false false Thu Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Mar 12 04:54:49 -0700 2007 Mon Mar 19 06:41:31 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 2 false true Thu May 17 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 29 08:59:25 -0700 2008 Wed Oct 29 09:00:04 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Aug 13 09:13:51 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 24 14:24:07 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 13 09:13:51 -0700 2008 Waterstones.com and the customer reviews of it sounded intriguing. I’m definitely going to try such tactics again in the future as The End of Mr Y turned out to be better than even those reviews suggested.

A bold and imaginat...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Jun 21 00:27:17 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 01 03:44:52 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Nov 28 15:15:46 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 16 16:55:50 -0800 2007
The premi...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed May 02 07:47:24 -0700 2007 Wed May 02 08:07:40 -0700 2007 The ideas that float in and out of the plot line are amazing, takin...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Jul 07 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Jul 05 01:47:09 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 04:37:19 -0700 2008 no."

By page 29 I was hooked. Very, very rare are the books that can deal with thought experiments, old books, and the nature of thought and reality without being utterly pretentious or just ba...more...]]> 3 2 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 07 03:18:58 -0800 2007 Tue Jan 15 05:34:15 -0800 2008
Ultimate...more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Sep 22 18:48:38 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 25 22:49:27 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Dec 23 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 25 20:24:55 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 25 20:31:52 -0800 2008 The End of Mr. Y is hard to describe. It's part mystery, part chase thriller, part metaphysical puzzle. Ariel Manto is a graduate student in Britain. Part of her study concerns an obscure 19th Century author who wrote an allegedly cursed book. When a copy falls into her hands, Ariel life begins ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Dec 03 09:44:09 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 03 09:57:28 -0800 2008 mindfuck!" - well, The End Of Mr Y takes that just about as literally as one can go. Thomas has created a complex book within a book, a universe within a universe, teeming with ideas and theorems, hope and life and ...more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 24 08:50:44 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 24 08:51:52 -0700 2009
Enjoyable romp through a refraction of the Zeitgeist of one imagined world, imagined hence real and representing the small academic froth of tropes that fluff up an otherwise weary world. Indeed, the latter signified by concrete imagery of roads, concrete, litter and general shabbiness t...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Apr 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 06 14:09:48 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 08 12:57:48 -0700 2009
I enjoyed this a lot. The balance between theory and story is good: the strengths of the characterisation and plot make the physics and philosophy fascinating. The notion of a cursed book, or a book containing knowledge too pow...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 29 05:10:21 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 01 02:44:03 -0700 2009
The story line revolves around a PhD student at Oxford, Ariel Manto, whose mentor just disappeared and she...more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Oct 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 05 14:59:15 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 10 14:38:15 -0700 2009 "You now have once choice. You..."

This is a bona fide masterpiece; it's reminiscent of the films The Matrix and Ghost In The Shell, whilst also cramming in a thousand fantastic ideas. A dense, complex but massively satisfying and compulsive read - the summary on the back cover gives very l...

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It wasn't even the constant drip-feed of Philosophy and Quantum Physics that had me yawning and se...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=93436