The End of Mr Y - Hardcover

Scarlett Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 184195957X ISBN 13: 9781841959573

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of "The End of Mr Y" in a second-hand bookshop, she can't believe her eyes. She's read about its author before, the outlandish Victorian scientist Thomas Lumas, and this is his most notorious, and rarest, book. It is also believed to hold a curse. Anyone who's ever read it, including Lumas, has disappeared without trace. With Mr Y under her arm, Ariel is thrust into an adventure of faith, physics, love, death, and everything in between. Part gothic mystery, part time-travelling love story, "The End of Mr Y" lies somewhere between "Shadow of the Wind" and "Dr Who." Scarlett Thomas sends us on a wild and irresistible quest into our deepest selves and our biggest questions.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Ingenious and original. A cracking good yarn, fizzing with intelligence." -- Philip Pullman

If you knew this book was cursed, would you read it?
When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of The End of Mr. Y in a second-hand bookstore, she can’t believe her eyes. Copies are exceedingly rare, and everyone who has ever read it—including its author, Victorian scientist Thomas Lumas-- has disappeared.
Ariel can’t resist the promise in the book’s history and its pages, and so steps into a thrilling adventure of time, space, love, death, and everything in between.

"Smart [and] stylish." -- International Herald Tribune

"Enormously ambitious and satisfying. It overflows with love for books not just as beautiful artefacts and repositories of secret knowledge, but as gateways into parallel universes." -- Time Out London

Scarlett Thomas is the author of Bright Young Things, Going Out, PopCo, and Our Tragic Universe.   ------ ORIGINAL 2006 EDITION If you knew this book were cursed, would you read it?
            Ariel Manto has a fascination with The End of Mr. Y, a book no one alive has read—maybe because it's cursed and everyone related to it (the author; various book collectors; Ariel’s doctoral advisor, Saul Burlem) disappears. But suddenly she discovers a rare copy in a used bookstore. Following in Mr. Y’s footsteps, she falls into a trance and steps into the Troposphere—a wonderland of an alternate dimension where she can travel through time and space using the thoughts of others. And so Ariel launches into a heart-racing, brain-teasing, time-twisting adventure of science, faith, consciousness, death, and everything in between.
            But what about the curse? Did Burlem read Mr. Y just before he vanished? Did these scary men in gray suits have anything to do with it? And now that Ariel understands the Troposphere--and her place in it—will she be able to save the world and still go back to it?
 

   SCARLETT THOMAS is the author of PopCo. She was named one of the twenty best young British writers by the Independent on Sunday in 2001 and Writer of the Year at the 2002 Elle Style Awards. She teaches writing at the University of Kent and lives in Canterbury.

About the Author:

Scarlett Thomas was born in London in 1972. Her other novels include Bright Young Things, Going Out and The End of Mr.Y, which was longlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kent.

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 184195957X
• ISBN 13: 9781841959573
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432