I’ve just finished “The End of Mr Y
” and it was outstanding. I read it a little each evening, whilst waiting for the small ones to go to sleep, as I didn’t dare sit and read it all in one go. Mainly because it’s one of those books that turns into a bit of a runaway train - it starts off by gently piquing your curiosity, and then gathers pace until you really, really don’t want to put it down. 500 mind boggling pages.
The blurb reads:
“When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of The End of Mr Y in a second-hand bookshop, she can’t believe her eyes.
She knows enough about its author, the eccentric Victorian scientist, Thomas Lumas, to know that copies are exceedingly rare. And, some say, cursed.
With Mr Y under her arm, Ariel finds herself swept into a thrilling adventure of love, sex, death and time travel.”
Now as blurbs go, that makes it sound kind of interesting, but nothing special. It was the cover and the black edges to the pages that made me pick it up, and Philip Pullman’s comment on the back “Ingenious and original. A cracking good yarn, fizzing with intelligence.”
It’s got everything from theoretical physics and a deconstruction of Einstein’s theories to sex in Little Chef toilets and what it’s like in the mind of a mouse. Extraordinary.
I can most definitely recommend it.