Critical Praise

"Like a trompe l'oeil painting, or a puzzle that invites us to draw at least two contradictory, yet equally plausible conclusions, Mr. Mee disturbs as it diverts, charms as it challenges."

——Washington Times

"Crumey tells [his] tale with elegance and humor, and in rich detail. His immense talent reveals itself most potently in his ability to find remarkable connections in otherwise disparate intellectual concepts conceived over the course of several centuries, and then to turn those connections into a coherent and lively story . . . The many surprises and twists [in this book] provide a rare and spectacular reading experience . . . Mr. Mee is a challenging book, but it's one to savor."

——Andrew C. Ervin, The Washington Post Book World

"An intellectual romp . . . Crumey has spun a delightful brain-tickler of a novel that undermines its own pretensions, a subversion that is in fact at the heart of the book's very real debate over the power of literature to redeem or corrupt-or do anything at all."

——Maureen Shelly, Time Out New York

"Crumey has written another novel of ideas in the grand tradition of Calvino, Borges, and Kundera . . . Delightful."

——Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Enriching, enlightening, and highly entertaining."

——The Boston Globe

"A good-humored, intelligent, very up-to-date novel whose narrators, like physicists, shape reality by observing it."

——The New York Times

"Clever, puckish, and artfully complicated . . . [Crumey's book] raises seductive questions about the nature of experience . . . Fans of Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn will relish this novel's puzzles and paradoxes, its unfolding and ingenious designs . . . Jaunty and sometimes enjoyably silly . . . Crumey is a confident narrator, and his book has a heart as well as a brain. It is not only an intellectual treat but a moving meditation on aspiration and desire."

——Hilary Mantel, The New York Times Book Review