I'm always drawn to stories about parallel dimensions, so The End of Mr. Y really caught my attention. Though the book is categorized as mainstream literary, it's riddled with science fiction and fantasy elements. This mind-meld of physics, metaphysics and literature makes it one of few recent books that I've read obsessively to the end.
The voice of the narrator, Ariel Manto, grabbed me right away. The thirty-something Ph.D. student with a dysfunctional family background has a penchant for kinky, self-destructive sex, loves obscure literature and philosophy, and is doing grad work on the little-known author, Thomas E. Lumas. As luck would have it, one rainy day she runs across his book — The End of Mr.Y — which is purportedly cursed. Ariel snatches it up using her expense money for the entire month and holes up to read the Victorian-era missive in her seedy, cold-water flat. Though fearful of the curse that promises death to all who read the book, Ariel relishes the danger. Thomas does a wonderful job of letting her quirky and witty heroine gradually unfold for us as the story progresses.
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2009.