End of Mr. Y

Have to share a couple of passages from the great new book I am reading; End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas. Its kind of very modern and yet traditional. A grad student finds an old book she’d wasn’t even sure existed, a book that was rumoured to cause the death of all who read it, starts reading it and then tries to reproduce a tincture referred to in the book.

One description that stood out was the line “and in this light it looks sepia yellow, like a jpeg of an old photograph.” Why not just “like an old photograph”? Is it that the jpeg actually looks a little different or that the most likely source would be a jpeg?

And this great passage: “Monster Munch is the only bit of the college I don’t like. It’s all done out in clean orange and pithy white curves and edges, with new-looking pool tables and a plasma screen. I prefer the decrepit litttle bar in the Russell Building that has stand-up ashtrays and chipped particle board tables. The students don’t like the Russell Bar, which means it’s usually empty. Occasionally they’ll go in there to revise, or to curl up on one of the stained old sofas with a hangover, but not that often. Anyway, you can’t smoke in Monster Munch. You can only do shiny things in Monster Munch; you have to be a shiny, clean person in here: The flourescent lights and the mirrors on the walls prevent you from being anything else.” And then the line later: “Patrick gets coffee for both of us: some sort of frothed milk thing for him, and an Americano for me (they call it “black coffee” in Russell).”