With a huge stack of books I’m supposed to be reading, as 2006 drew to a close I escaped to a book that picked up at BEA and just recently cracked. And liked: it’s The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas. Its protagonist, Ariel, likes Derrida, has a self-destructive bent and lives in grad student poverty. What’s not to love?
Ariel, whose PhD work in thought experiements overlaps with old weird science (aether) and new weird science (quantum physics) finds a rare book that may be cursed; it sets her blood racing. Of course she reads it. The book, ostensibly ficiton, points the way to another dimension. Then all the weird sciences kind of intersect with, convincingly, a mouse god, two american thugs, and a handsome former priest.
Through it all, The End of Mr. Y is in the present tense (with the exception of some excerpts — including much of the cursed book. Read at your own peril!). Ariel is a compelling, enchanting narrator; she has to be to keep the first-person-present narrative flowing. But it does more than flow: it races. It’s a breakneck read.
I’m not the only one who gulped it down. Perhaps Scarlett Thomas, by putting Ariel on her couch, ritual coffee & cigarettes at arms’ reach, reading for hours oblivious to the world around her — perhaps Thomas gives us reading addicts permission to do the same. Maud Newton did; when I realized I was hungry, I made like Ariel and fixed up some lentils for dinner.
The book has had some rave reviews from smart people. It’s intellectually engaging with a narrator with an edge and a whiplash plot. Excellent. As good a read as it was to close 2006, I can say it’d be a great place to start 2007.
