Maud just finished reading it, and is still reeling from the experience and Mark reviewed it in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr. Y is making its way around the lit blogosphere these days (although Jessa has been raving about it for weeks), and everyone is finding it to be a complex, deep and thoughtful book. I've been intrigued by the reviews, by what some folks see as detrimental to the story, and others completely ignore. None of the reviews are really consistent - everyone agrees it's complex, but they all have separate little parts that bother them a bit. Since I just slowly finished it (savoring, savoring), and also fired off my first round of questions to Scarlett for a combined interview with Jessa, I've been looking for mentions of Mr. Y and trying to get a handle on just what everyone else thinks.

Mark's only real complaint was the main character's discovery of an extremely rare book which will change her life ("The disappointing ease with which Ariel obtains the supposedly rare book is one of Thomas' few narrative missteps"). I thought it was perfectly fine that she found it in a used book shop - I think every bibliophile harbors that secret hope of finding treasure in a bookstore or garage sale (I found an old edition of Jane's All the World's Aircraft for $30 at a mall antique sale and it was worth easily three times that amount) so most readers would be willing to accept Ariel's discovery - it's how we want to find books, so why not her?

The Pop Matters review of the book started off by talking about Chick Lit and books that women write - which derailed me into thinking the reviewer was comparing Mr. Y to Chick Lit, when really she wasn't. She does bring up Ariel's sexual past ("While some aspects of the novel feel like overkill—Ariel’s sordid sexual history, for instance, is frequently mentioned but never explained in any satisfying way—they can be forgiven for the just-right degree of pulp they add to the story.") something that Mark felt compelled to mention as well: and Ariel, in particular, suffers from a missing layer, something that would make her cynicism, her tendency to nihilism and destructive sexual behavior, feel more anchored and earned. Her past is glossed - drunk father, self-absorbed mother - but it's not enough to account for the demons that appear to prey upon this otherwise vivid character as she guides us through the labyrinth.

Hmmm. You know it's funny, but I was willing to accept that Ariel had sexual issues because pretty much everyone does of some sort or another. Why does she let someone tie her up on occasion - is it because Daddy didn't love her or Mommy didn't care enough or a boyfriend got too aggressive or the kids on the playground were too mean or her dog died? I don't know and this wasn't a book for telling me all that. Ariel has issues and she's trying to find a way to deal with them but more importantly she has a cursed book and some creepy government guys on her tail and might have just broken through into some amazing level of transcendence.

But hey - why does she have that sexual issue? It's just who she is, and it didn't bother me at all.

Pop Matters goes a wee bit further though with this little slap at the novel's overall impact: "As a cult novel, The End of Mr. Y is brilliant. Readers should take note, however, that the book is not quite “literary� and, as such, does not pretend to Greatness. Yes, it’s a solid, smart, idea-driven, dare I say “fun� story; on the other hand, some of the language could have been more carefully chosen, and some of the characters’ motivations could be clearer."

Okay, I'm completely confused now. Why isn't this book "literary" and what does that mean anyway? Mark Danielewski is literary with books that must be turned sideways and Marisha Pessel is literary with cheeky footnotes, but Thomas is not because her story is fun?

Fun for physics majors maybe but not a walk in the park for us nonscience folks. Fun? Only in a very "intent on learning and thinking and opening myself up to many abstract ideas" kind of way. And what really does "...some of the language could have been more carefully chosen, and some of the characters’ motivations could be clearer." mean? What language clearer? The parts about quantum physics or Derrida or the essence of thought? How clear can you get, and what do you want to find here that's missing?

And then there was the Booklist review.

Oh My.

British author Thomas bites off a bit more than she can chew in this novel incorporating time travel, Derrida, and the dangers of sadistic trysts. Strange things keep happening to British university lecturer Ariel Manto. First her supervisor disappears; then she discovers the rarest of rare books, The End of Mr. Y, at a secondhand bookshop. The tome was penned by Thomas Lumas, a nineteenth-century scientist who, as luck would have it, is the subject of Ariel's dissertation. (The book tells the tale of a man who swallows a tincture, stares into a black dot, and winds up in a place called the Troposphere, where he travels space and time through others' minds.) Bored and befuddled by real life, Ariel mimics the author's eerie experiment, with mixed results. (On her first trip, she melds minds with a randy rodent and a psychotic cat.) Like her previous novel, PopCo (2005), Thomas' mildly amusing second offering aspires to be both wonky and hip: her protagonist obsesses over philosophical matters one moment, her lamentable love life the next. Chick lit for nerds.

Okay - "dangers of sadistic trysts"? Sorry, but must everyone who reads this book be so sexually obsessed? I mean the sex is so minor - so incredibly minor - and so not graphically portrayed. Ariel just dwells a bit on why she does what she does - why she allows what she does, but "dangers"? No, not even close. Then, after a plot description, we get "Like her previous novel, PopCo (2005), Thomas' mildly amusing second offering aspires to be both wonky and hip: her protagonist obsesses over philosophical matters one moment, her lamentable love life the next."

This.is.so.wrong. I hate this kind of review because it so completely misrepresents the book (and in this case swipes at her earlier, and much adored by me, novel PopCo as well.) It's not "mildly amusing" - I wouldn't call Mr. Y amusing at all - fascinating, intelligent, noirish even, but not amusing. I also don't see when Ariel obsesses over her "lamentable love life". I assume the reviewer is referring to when she questions her sad and humiliating relationship with Patrick - a man she engages in bad choice sex with. (I can't really call it a true relationship though.) Or maybe, the few passages when she misses Adam, a decent man she is attracted to, but does not think she is good enough for. Less than 5% of the narrative is about relationships, and I might even be overstating that. But that doesn't stop Booklist from the kicker: "Chick lit for nerds".

You must be kidding.

That is wrong and disappointing on every level. Readers of chick lit will not enjoy this book because romance and relationships are not the point of the story (and that's what we want when we read chick lit). And chick lit for nerds? What does that mean? How does someone classify this or come up with it? This is a very intense and weighty novel and when I read chick lit I want romance - I want happily ever after and some funny moments and yes, I do most certainly want a decent plot, but I don't want to be visiting black holes and quantum physics and the rest. I don't want to be derrailed from love and living and the often hilarious moments found in crafting relationships.

I don't want to have to wrap my head around the multiverse. Please.

Clearly, Mr. Y was read by the wrong reviewer for Booklist, and that happens. It's a shame though because it has so misbranded this title and will result in some readers skipping it and others being very disappointed with it. And none of that needs to happen, if the reviewer does their job.

Something to keep in mind as I write my next round of reviews.

So who should read The End of Mr. Y? Fans of Wiliam Gibson or Richard Powers or even - and here's a stretch but one I like - Andrea Barrett. There are so many layers to this book and so many things to think about, but the payoff when you get to the end is worth it - the payoff from reading a deeply thought out and well crafted, intelligent novel - is immense. My head is still spinning from Mr. Y but in a good way. It's a book that made me think, and made me smarter from having read it. The best thing about Scarlett Thomas I think is that she is so utterly brave with her writing and she should get credit for that - she should get a lot of credit.

My question is, what's next?