End of Mr. Y (Thomas) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Unfortunately, to my mind, the more times Ariel swallows her holy water and enters the Troposphere and the more deadly become the perils there, the more the place feels like a computer game.... But there is a vast gap between even the most interactive computer game and genuine narrative, and this novel dissipates much of its power in that empty space.
Ursula Le Guin - Guardian (UK)


Thomas writes with marvelous panache, although I wish she indulged less in her earnest calls for homeopathy and animal rights. Amid all the novel s engaging questions about the nature of reality, it s hard to get worked up about a subplot that has Ariel traveling through time to save laboratory mice. Still, she spins Derrida and subatomic theory into a wholly enchanting alternate universe that should appeal to a wide popular audience, and that s something no deconstructionist or physicist has managed to do. Consider The End of Mr. Y an accomplished, impressive thought experiment for the 21st century.
Gregory Cowles - New York Times Book Review


You might say that Thomas has redefined activism for the Digital Age. Inspired by a venerable tradition, she achieves here a scope and a passion to match the intelligence and empathy her fiction has always had.
Los Angeles Times Book Review


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.
Publishers Weekly


Graduate student Ariel Manto acquires a copy of a cursed book, The End of Mr. Y. According to the curse, whoever reads the book will die. This doesn't stop Ariel from reading it and taking a tincture prescribed in the text, which transports her to a parallel, multidimensional existence called the Troposphere. Suddenly, Ariel is being pursued by ominous government agents, making friends with the god of mice, falling in love with an office mate, and trying to save the world or at least, the laboratory mice therein. The bare plot outline cannot begin to describe the dizzying inventiveness of Thomas's (PopCo) second novel. It is a combination of postmodern philosophy and physics, spine-tingling science fiction, clever, unexpected narrative twists, and engaging characters all on one wild drug trip. With this book, Thomas, who in 2001 was named by the Independent on Sunday one of Britain's 20 best young writers, has moved into first place. While the science, mathematics, and philosophy may challenge readers, this novel is highly recommended for all fiction collections. —Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park
Library Journal


British author Thomas bites off a bit more than she can chew in this novel incorporating time travel, Derrida, and the dangers of sadistic trysts.... Like her previous novel, PopCo (2005), Thomas' mildly amusing second offering aspires to be both wonky and hip: her protagonist obsesses over philosophical matters one moment, her lamentable love life the next. Chick lit for nerds. —Allison Block
Booklist


The curiosity of a young academic triggers a journey of wonder and danger. Ariel Manto, a Ph.D. candidate at a British university, gets an unexpected day off when old tunnels in the campus building adjoining hers threaten to collapse. On the way home, she stumbles onto a much bigger stroke of luck. At a modest bookshop, she comes across a copy of Thomas Lumas's seminal work, The End of Mr. Y, a mysterious novel often cited but thought to be no longer extant. Serendipitously, Ariel is studying Lumas. Lured to the university by Professor Saul Burlem, Ariel has been writing extensively about science, but from a literary perspective. This makes Lumas—a scientific theorist who wrote books in many genres—an ideal candidate for her research. Shortly after April moved into Burlem's capacious office, Burlem vanished, presumably on a research project. Ariel begins to devour Lumas's masterpiece, chunks of which alternate with the main narrative. Mr. Y describes a sort of time travel, into what Lumas calls the Troposphere. Unfortunately, the crucial page that explains how the hero achieves the time-travel trick is missing. Acting on a hunch, Ariel downloads all the information on Burlem's computer, and just in time. Department secretary Yvonne is about to have all Burlem's belongings put into storage to make room for two new occupants, the overfriendly Heather and the highly attractive Adam, with whom Ariel feels an immediate attraction. They seem headed for an affair until Adam informs her that he's a clergyman. Burlem's computer contains the missing page, which had a formula, the ingredients for which Ariel acquires at a local herbalist. Almost before she knows it, she's transported to Lumas's alternate reality, gets chased by CIA-like agents back in her "real" world and indeed drifts toward romance with dreamy Adam. Delicious cross-genre literary picnic, breezy and fiercely intelligent, reminiscent of Haruki Murakami.
Kirkus Reviews