When Ariel Manto discovers a copy of The End of Mr Y in a second-hand bookshop, she can't believe her eyes. She knows enough about its author the outlandish Victorian scientist Thomas Lumas, to know that copies are exceedingly rare. And cursed.

The novel tells how to enter the Troposphere – a place where all consciousness is connected, and you can surf other people's thoughts. But surely the whole idea is just fiction? It is in a novel, after all.

Ariel would rather have fiction than reality – which is just poverty and bad sex – anyway. But soon she's running for her life, surfing both fiction and reality as she tries to escape from the people who want her secrets.

The End of Mr Y is a thought experiment wrapped in a contemporary adventure novel that asks questions about thought, language, destiny and the very limits of being and time.