Monday 7 July 2008

The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas

Warning - contains spoilers - dont read if you dont want to know.... :o)

 

eomy I have just finished reading "the end of Mr Y" the idea is based all around telepathy, time travel and metaphor. 

The main character Ariel is a PHd student who is writing her thesis about an author called Lumus and is fascinated by his final book "The End of Mr Y".  The object of her desire and fascination is a  very rare book with only a few copies in existence, although it is rumoured to be cursed.  Amazingly for her she finds a copy in a second hand store (lucky that) and embarks on a journey of the mind, soul and body. 

She falls in love/lust with her newly acquainted office mate - Adam,  although she is having an affair with a professor called Patrick.   her life spins out of control after she finds a way of accessing an area of shared consciousness called the troposphere / mind space.  She is hunted by two rogue agents from the CIA / Project Star light who want her to give them the way to enter mind space. 

The book ends with her and Adam entering a perfect garden on the edge of all consciousness - which i assume is a metaphor for the Garden of Eden (with her being Eve)

Over all the book was boring, Scarlett waffled a great deal - in my opinion just to waste pages and make the book thicker.  The end wasn't exciting at all, the "tasks" she was set were too easily completed, the men from project starlight who could have made things interesting vanish after one of them needs to go to the toilet. 

5 word book review - The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas

slow, waffle, sex, telepathy, fiction

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