The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas.   While I'm always hesitant to judge a book by its cover, The End of Mr. Y is one where the cover really did it for me.  Unfortunately, this wasn't the US cover pictured left, though the mouse is cute, and the book does tangentially involve mice and gods of mice.  I saw the book in a UK Borders, where it's getting window treatment in a lush wine and gold retro hardcover format.  Take a look at a tiny version, and you'll see what I mean: (hit 'read more')






















Add to that raves on the back by Phillip Pullman and Douglas Coupland, and I was powerless to resist the lure of the impulse buy. (£3 off, as well!)

It's one of those deliciously postmodern quasi-meta narratives.  The End of Mr. Y is about a book called The End of Mr. Y - an extremely rare and cursed obscure 19th century text by an even littler known author.  That just happens to be snatched up in a seocnd hand bookshop by a starving grad student doing a paper on the book's author.  Add to this conspiracy theories, reality as a videogame, mousegods, Baudrillard, sex and religion, deconstructionism, and some really good lay descriptions of quantum theory and "poststructuralist physics" and you have a remarkably brainy, eminently readable tome.   It's fascinating, heartily recommended, and if more authors want to make heroines of book-obsessed redheads, I certainly won't complain.