The End of Mr. Y
A Novel
-
-
2.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
A cursed book sends a young woman on a philosophical journey through an alternate dimension in this "stylish and dizzying" novel by the author of PopCo (The New York Times).
Graduate student Ariel Manto has a fascination with nineteenth-century scientists—especially Thomas Lumas, the mysterious author of The End of Mr. Y, a book no one alive has read. When she uncovers a copy at a used bookstore, Ariel goes down an interdimensional rabbit hole of science and faith, consciousness and death, space and time, and everything in between. And to make matters worse, the CIA is onto her.
Following in Mr. Y's footsteps, Ariel swallows a tincture, stares into a black dot, and is transported into the Troposphere: 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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Thomas's dense, freewheeling novel, Ariel Manto, an oversexed renegade academic, stumbles across a cursed text, which takes her into the Troposphere, a dimension where she can enter the consciousness, undetected, of other beings. Thomas first signals something is askew even in Ariel's everyday life when a university building collapses; soon after, Ariel discovers her intellectual holy grail at a used book shop: a rare book with the same title as the novel, written by an eccentric 19th-century writer interested in "experiments of the mind." The volume jump-starts her doctoral thesis, but her adviser disappears. And when Ariel follows a recipe in the book, she finds herself in deep trouble in the Troposphere. Her young ex-priest love interest may be too late to save her. Thomas blithely references popular physics, Aristotle, Derrida, Samuel Butler and video game shenanigans while yoking a Back to the Future like conundrum to a gooey love story. The novel's academic banter runs the gamut from intellectually engaging to droning; this journey to the "edge of consciousness" is similarly playful but less accessible than its predecessor, PopCo.
