The End Of Mr. Y: Scarlett Thomas

I first read The End of Mr Y in 2007, having had it so enthusiastically recommended to me by a Waterstones bookworm that I snapped it up on the spot. And I was SO glad I did; what an original story! If I were to try and describe the vibe of this book - because reading it really does evoke a feeling - then I’d say I felt energised … it’s utterly compelling and intoxicating, to the point where it almost resonates with a potency that’s impossible to ignore. Picking it up again this week I briefly wondered if I wouldn’t feel as strongly about it after all this time … but it was a solid 5 stars then, and it more than upholds that status today. Ariel Manto is a PhD student with a penchant for ‘thought experiments’, theoretical physics, and Victorian scientists. Her studies have seeded and nurtured an obsession with one eccentric scientist in particular; the enigmatic Thomas Lumas. Having read almost all his published works, just one remains tantalisingly out of reach - The End of Mr Y. This book is shrouded in mystery, with the only known copy said to be held in the vault of a bank … in Germany. Ariel’s PhD supervisor, initially incredibly supportive of her pursuit of Mr Y, has a sudden and inexplicable change of heart … and then even more suddenly, vanishes! Somewhat dissolute and directionless, Ariel is enjoying a quiet smoke out of her office window one day when the ground quite literally opens up, taking a neighbouring uni building down with it. No, this isn’t the work of the curse, just a disagreement between mother nature and structural engineers … but it’s the event that prompts Ariel to walk home early, passing a second hand bookshop where she stumbles across a box of books bearing an uncanny resemblance to her own studies … and an exceedingly rare copy of Lumas’s The End of Mr Y. Thomas Lumas’s The End of Mr Y is a book about a respectable businessman who passes the annual Goose Fair on his way home from a meeting. He feels himself drawn in to the fair ‘as if by mesmerism’, deeper and deeper until he happens upon the Spectral Opera. Unable to comprehend what he’s seeing he lingers after the show finishes and follows curiosity’s claw to a moodily-lit ante chamber where he encounters the fairground doctor, a mysterious tincture to drink, and a black dot. Hours later he resurfaces from an inexplicable experience where he was living inside the soul of another man; thinking his thoughts, feeling his emotions, tasting his food, all while remaining lucid and cogent, entirely aware of his own self existing in parallel. The doctor is gone when Mr Y wakes, and so begins a fruitless search for the fair which blossoms into an all-consuming obsession and the decline of his business. It’s apparent that Thomas Lumas’s book isn’t the work of fiction he asserts it to be, and soon Ariel becomes convinced that the recipe for the tincture was transcribed on the missing page of the book. Without giving too much away, Ariel embarks on an obsessive quest to track down the missing page to recreate this mysterious draught, so she too can travel through the thoughts and memories of others. The place where this mind-travel takes place was christened the Troposphere by Mr Y in Lumas’s book; it’s a place that’s as hard to grasp as your own dreams, with that sensation of unease and disquiet that linger after the dream has faded. The Troposphere isn’t a cosy dream world - quite the opposite, and it’s made all the more unsafe by the grey-suited, gun-toting American spooks who are hunting Ariel in this world, and the real one. The End of Mr Y is a marmite book … and I’m a wholehearted lover. It’s an ingenious book of many layers, time zones, and narratives. There are times when the conversations between Ariel and other characters delve really deeply into physics, philosophy, religion and homeopathy. My brain just isn’t wired that way, and I found myself re-reading some parts of it because I wanted to try and understand the many depths and facets of this book. However, the abundance of science in no way affected my enjoyment of the book. Whilst I’m on this point, I want to make mention of the fact that I’ve read several reviews of The End of Mr Y that are quite disparaging of the accuracy of its scientific content … whilst these reviewers are clearly mega-brains, I think they’re missing the point that this is a book to be read for enjoyment; it’s not an academic tome. In fact, I think it’s ironic that a sentence lifted straight from Thomas Lumas’s own original copy of the End of Mr Y makes the purpose of Scarlett Thomas’s book quite clear: ‘It is only as a work of fiction that I wish this book to be considered.’ So, if you’re craving a book that’s going to seize you by the imagination and draw you in to something enchanting and a little dark, The End of Mr Y is your book. Scarlett Thomas has woven a story of so many layers, and you will emerge feeling just a little bit smarter too! It’s fast-paced and addictive, and although you won’t always like the characters, you’ll find its intriguing complexity makes it nigh on impossible to put down … right until you reach the most perfectly symbiotic ending.

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

In dem überwältigenden Wust einer riesigen New Yorker Buchhandlung fiel mir "The End of Mr Y" vorallem wegen des Buchcovers auf (der deutlich schöner war als der hierzulande Erhältliche). Da die Story auf dem Rückencover nicht uninteressant schien, habe ich es als Fluglektüre eingesteckt. Entgegen meiner Vorsätze und meiner bleiernen Müdigkeit habe ich auf dem 9h-Flug von NYC nach Frankfurt nicht geschlafen sondern gelesen... Story: Ariel arbeitet für ihre Doktorarbeit in einem völligen Nischenfach, für das sich genau genommen nur sie selbst und ihr Doktorvater interessieren: den englischen Schriftsteller Thomas Lumas, welcher nach Fertigstellung seines letzten Buches (The End Of Mr Y) spurlos verschwand. Genauso wie der Lektor, der Drucker und überhaupt jeder, der mit diesem Buch in Berührung kam - inklusive Ariels Doktorvater. Per Zufall gerät jenes seltene und angeblich verflucht Buch in Ariels Besitz. Obwohl der Fluch des Buches fast berühmter als das Werk selbst ist, beschließt Ariel "The End Of Mr Y" zu lesen - in der Hoffnung herauszufinden, was mit ihrem Doktorvater geschehen ist. Kaum beginnt sie mit der Lektüre, muss Ariel feststellen, dass sich hinter "The End Of Mr Y" weit mehr verbirgt als sie ahnen konnte. Und auch die zwei Schläger die plötzlich hinter ihr her sind lassen nicht Gutes ahnen. Was als literarische Detektivgeschichte beginnt, verdichtet sich nach und nach zu einer fantastischen Reise hinter die Grenzen von Realität, Wissen, Glauben, Wahrheit... Wenn Du ein Buch in Deinem Besitz hättest, auf dem ein Fluch lastet, würdest Du es lesen? Meine Meinung: Nach dem Cover hat mich natürlich die Frage gereizt: wenn "The End Of Mr Y" verflucht ist - lese ICH es dann? Das habe ich (und zum Glück bin ich noch da). Von Anfang an ist klar, dass hinter diesem Buch mehr stecken muss als augenscheinlich, und es stellt sich heraus, dass MrY das Tor zu einer anderen Sphäre ist, zu einer Metaebene des Geistes, die es erlaubt, als mentaler Zaungast den Gedanken anderer Menschen zu lauschen. Ein schwerer Brocken für den aufgeklärten Leser und die nicht minder naturwissenschaftlich geprägte Ariel. Die Jagd durch die Welt der Materie und die der Sphäre ist spannend und aufregend erzählt, zumal man selten mehr weiß als Ariel selber. Und die stürzt sich nun sehr unbesonnen in medias res. So gilt es herauszufinden, WAS diese Sphäre genau ist, aber auch was Ariels Doktorvater zugestoßen ist und warum plötzlich irgendwelche Männer hinter Ariel her sind (und zwar nicht auf die "Blume&Pralinen"-Art, sondern die etwas handfestere und endgültigere Weise). Vor dem Hintergrund dieser phantastischen Erkundungs- und Survival-Tour stellt das Buch nebenher ganz spielerisch die aktuellen Theorien zur Beschaffenheit unseres Universums dar und stellt ganz unaufdringlich grundlegende Fragen nach Verantwortlichkeit, Mitgefühl und Opferbereitschaft. Und stellt, mit der Metasphäre als Gedankenexperiment die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Lebens - und findet gegen Ende eine (für mich) völlig unerwartete Antwort. Ob man mit diesem Schlusspunkt einverstanden ist, muss wohl jeder nach der Lektüre selber entscheiden, ein interessanter Twist und glänzender Abschluss ist es allemal. Von der etwas phantastisch anmutenden Story um verschwundene Professoren und Geistessphären sollte man sich nicht abschrecken lassen - MrY liest sich spannend, abwechslungsreich und bleibt dabei mehr im Her und Jetzt als mancher Krimi. Zumindest im Englischen ist die sprachliche Ausgestaltung sehr lebendig und flüssig und zieht einen richtig in das Geschehen hinein. Wer sich noch ein kleines bisschen für das aktuelle Geschehen im Streit um den BigBang interessiert ohne sich gleich mit irgendwelchen Fachjournalen belasten zu wollen, kann nichts falsch machen. (Vergleiche mit dem ehrgeizigen aber langatmigen "Sophies Welt" sind übrigens völlig unangebracht.)

The story of PhD student Ariel Manto who goes down a deep, surreal rabbit hole. There is a cursed book, the use of homeopathy to open portals to a parallel universe called the Troposphere where consciousness is networked and you can enter the minds of other people. There are foreign agents who want to kill her and others who help her and others who want secrets kept. There are ruminations on quantum physics and deconstructionist theory and phenomenology. This is mystery and adventure and thriller and science fiction and fantasy all put into a blender, Thomas swinging for the fences and connecting. “This is more fun than it sounds,” said the New York Times in its review, “and more fun than it has any right to be.” The book title is a pun; the main character is an anagram for “I am not real.” It is a brilliant work and one of my favorites of all time.

Lo compré ilusionada. El libro prometía pero acabó siendo aburrido. No lo recomiendo. Romanticón, previsible y una trama que se va desmoronado. Lástima!

Arrivato in tempo. Regalo molto gradito per il mio compagno.

un po' avventura, un po' fantasy e un po' filosofia ... avvincente! fa riflettere ma rimane comunque leggero e piacevole!