Pam's Book 33: The End of Mr. Y

Ariel is a PhD student at an unnamed university in England, studying the works of metaphysical novelist Thomas Lumas. Weird things begin happening when her adviser disappears and she discovers Lumas's exceedingly rare novel: The End of Mr. Y. Mr. Y of the book-within-a-book is at a carnival and runs into a "doctor" who mixes up a potion that allows Mr. Y to enter the mind of a carnival illusionist. The doctor disappears overnight and Mr. Y chases after him in search of this potion. Over the years Mr. Y beggars himself trying to find the doctor. He finally succeeds and it ends up ruining his life. The page of the book that contains the recipe to the potion is missing. (SPOILER ALERT: If you plan on reading the book, you might not want to read the rest of this.) Ariel stumbles across the missing page and decides to concoct the potion and try it herself. In the meantime, Ariel is being chased by men purporting to be CIA. Ariel undergoes all sorts of adventure, both inside and outside the minds of others, all the time trying to avoid the men who are chasing her. She meets a man at some point and develops what is possibly the first healthy romantic relationship of her life. She meets a mouse-god. She finds her adviser.

This book was fascinating and kept me gripped from beginning to end. I ran across it at the airport bookstore in Stockholm; it came highly recommended by the clerk, as did the next book I'm going to blog about.