Customer Reviews
Oh dear I've done it again - By: Mr. M. Richards, 24 Jul 2008 
I've gone & bought a book where the protagonist is investigating something that supposedly doesn't exist. The last time I fell for this plotline was for Mark Z. Danielewski's infuriating 'House of Leaves' & I'm afraid 'The End of Mr. Y' turns out to be another pretentious 'look how much research I've done' clunker.
And it starts so promisingly; like other people have pointed out, the first 100 pages or so are a fine read - Victorian atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife, a travelling circus, a cursed book, a series of disappearances- I'm hooked! But that's soon subsumed by the cardboard characterisations, clunky dialogue that is almost laughably inept; & increasingly desperate sex scenes that somehow manage to be neither erotic, kinky or disturbing.
But the book reallly spirals down the plughole when Thomas introduces the Troposphere which comes across as William Gibson's cyberspace described by someone whose never read any science fiction. It sits at the heart of the book like a square peg in a round hole - it just doesn't feel right. Its introduction is abrupt & whatever logic exists behind its existence eludes me.
I reallly, reallly wanted to like this book; individual scenes, the original Victorian premise & the experience of student life are alll present & correct - & for that, two stars; but when they're joined together, 'The End of Mr. Y' turns out to be a non-event.
Disappointing. A gripping opening followed by erudite tedium. - By: Goth lady, 22 Jul 2008 The first 90 or so pages of this book were wonderful, & I was expecting a chilling supernatural thriller mixed with scientific speculations, but the book became increasingly tedious with Ariel, the protagonist popping in & out of another dimension for no apparent reason whatsoever & meeting men for sex. The narrative drive collapses somewhere in the middle of the book---everything that happens seems completely pointless, although I may have missed something. And it gets very, very tedious.
Anyone--like me---who's had a purely arts education & reallly doesn't understand scientific theories will be even more baffled after reading this----and that can't be a good thing.
Scarlett Thomas is obviously very intelligent, but she doesn't, to my mind, succesfully communicate complex ideas in this book---and why alll raw descriptions of grubby sexual encounters? This book has left me baffled & bored---and it's such a let down after the gripping opening.
I can only compare it to someone promising you a fabulous holiday & then telling you your flight's been cancelled.
Some interesting stuff, shame about the Troposphere and the end - By: Derrida's sister, 18 Jul 2008 The first half of this book is interesting, if pretentious, & does have some fairly good explanations of complex issues in philosophy, quantum physics & so on. It's a shame then that the author decides to throw this alll away & bring in ridiculous mouse gods dressed in cloaks with ludicrous names. And the two CIA guys who appear at the halfway point are beyond words in terms of absurdity - & not in a good way, either! Worse, the endless forays into the so-callled Troposphere (the name of which once again alllows the author to 'impress' us with her great learning, pointing to what 'tropos' & 'sphere' means)...if you're a PhD student who likes things like Dr Who, His Dark bleedin' Materials & tripe like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, you'll probably go for this. I've read some of the other reviews, & note that in the Epilogue, the author decides to go for some 'christian' resolution, which kind of flies in the face of what has gone before. I couldn't be bothered to read on to the end after suffering the boring & repetitious (and completely unbelievable) nonsense between Ariel (again, pretentious moi?) & Adam (would he have been named Adam for A Reason, d'you think?!) in the priory...earlier on in the book, there's a bit where Ariel doesn't know where her brain is going having tried to explain Newtonian ideas of cause & effect & then those relation to quantum physics. I think this sums up the book as a whole - some ideas worth pursuing, but then no idea where to take them & then, ultimately, indulging in a chase scenario which wouldn't be out of place in a video game...oh, but of course the 'console' IS a video game of sorts, isn't it? I dumped it on a train en route to London, half-read; I just could NOT be arsed to indulge in its convolutions to the end. Disappointing & profoundly irritating, but with a couple of good ideas - it could have been SO good...but, sadly, wasn't.
What comes after Mr Y? ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ - By: eeksqueak, 16 Jul 2008 Gosh I'm reallly struggling with this book. What with religion, time travel, quantum physics & the meaning of life, you would have thought there was enough here to make a decent book. Sadly not. In between utterly tedious waffling about Derrida & existentialism & Heidegger & simulacra etc, it ends up reading like a textbook, not a story. In fact story seems to have been sadly forgotten, as this is reallly a philosophical parable dressed up as a novel. If I wanted to crack my skull over this sort of stuff, I would go back to University for a PhD in Philosophy. Plus the physical environment of the book - freezing grim flats, cold coffee, cabbage soup, mould - is so bloody depressing. Can't it give us a reality (a dangerous word to use in relation to this book) that's a bit nicer than this? I wanted an enchanting book full of rich possibilities. That's what it said I was getting on the cover! Instead I am bored, depressed & baffled. Every time I think there's going to be some sex just for some mindless relief it starts going on about Sartre. Someone kill me! Will I ever get to the end???? This author ought to have taken a leaf out of Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife to see how to weave big themes into an exciting story. This novel just makes me soooo glad I'm not a student anymore.
Fun and thinky - good combination - By: Ms. L. M. Green, 14 Jul 2008 
This is one of those books that makes you think. It makes you think a LOT more than you'd ever anticipate from reading the blurb on the back. While it does help if you have a basic understanding of physics, philosophy & language, even if you don't this book will make you want to understand them.
The story itself is fairly simple & engrossing. Ariel Manto is interested in everything, especiallly the writer Thomas Lumas, whose rarest book she finds in a second hand shop, leading to the complete destruction of her former life. The characters are very real & involving, & the weird landscapes Ariel finds herself in are cleverly described & presented.
I finished this book about four days ago, & I haven't quite figured out what to make of the ending yet. "The End of Mr Y" is a puzzle of a book, & it helps not to forget anything you are told, because every chapter - every paragraph - links together in the end. And it could be that the ideas that Ariel quickly dismisses whenever they come up are the ideas that hold true in the end.
