- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Picador; New Ed edition (4 May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330376810
- ISBN-13: 978-0330376815
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13.2 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 816,486 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Mr Mee
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Product Description
Product Description
'In short - it's fabulous. This is a novel which deserves to break its author through, if ever I read one... [Mr Mee] had me helpless with laughter.' Jonathan Coe
Book Description
Elderly Scottish bookworm Mr Mee searches the Internet for the legendary Rosier's Encyclopaedia which supposedly outlines an 18th-century quantum theory. Instead he enters a strange new world of cyber-hoaxers and online pornography. Meanwhile university lecturer Dr Petrie, an expert on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, recounts his infatuation with one of his own students. And in the third strand of this unique comedy of ideas, Rousseau's Laurel-and-Hardy-like neighbours Ferrand and Minard hold the key to Rosier's Encyclopaedia, Rousseau's madness, and Mr Mee himself. Combining history and fantasy, philosophy and farce, Crumey's novel is an intellectual page-turner that keeps the reader laughing and guessing to the end. 'This book is fabulous stuff: erudite but not patronising, elegantly and simply written, jumping ambitiously across centuries but with a good dash of down-to-earth lust for entertainment. More than once, Crumey make his reader pause, rest the book in his lap, and acknowledg that life really is quite extraordinary. He deserves to be better known' The Times
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mr Mee waltzes between three narratives. The stories of Mr Mee, a geriatric Candide unloosed on the Internet, a dying lecturer obsessed with Proust, Rousseau and one of his students, and the double-act antics of Ferrand and Minard, two eighteenth century copyists who appear briefly in Book X of Rousseau's Confessions, are woven together with considerable skill and undeniable charm. Throughout all three narratives shimmers the elusive Rosier's Encyclopaedia, a mammoth Borgesian work that claims, among other philosophical pirouettes, to disprove the existence of the universe. The novel is often delightfully funny, especially during Mr Mee's unwitting encounters with the seedier side of the twentieth century, but is most remarkable for the intellectual caprice of the mysterious encyclopaedia. For example, in one section machines are extrapolated from poems, according to the balance, weight and rhythm of the lines; then, the process is reversed and poems are discovered in the arrangement of inanimate objects. One of the joys of the novel is its examination of how what we think of as 'history' passes the majority of us by: as one character puts it "the 'swinging sixties' was in reality something which always seemed to be happening elsewhere, to other, more fashionable people'. Many of the concerns of Crumey's previous novels are revisited: the use of technology, the Enlightenment philosophes, the nature of chance and paradox; engagingly expressed through metafictions. Despite the scientific verve and literary allusions, this novel of ideas is certainly not a soulless machine or superficial game. Perhaps the most haunting section concerns the lecturer's childlessness, and Crumey conveys the way in which the couple fill their lives with seemingly banal concerns in order to stave off thinking about their lack with subtlety and poignancy. Language as a means to conceal as much as a means to communicate suffuses the novel, along with the sense that the technological advances in the methods of communication matter less than whether or nor one has something to say. Crumey dissects with clarity both the inarticulate moment and the necessity of articulation.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this novel you will find the answer to the question is fire a lifeform? and be able to identify the link between Rousseau, Proust, the computer, and the internet (oh, and Jimmy Shand...).
Andrew Crumey is one of a new type of British writers, more interested in a tradition exemplified by Borges, Calvino, Barthelme, and Kundera, than another suburban study of the humdrum lives of humdrum people. ( James Meek and Dan Rhodes are others writing in this way) His fiction taps the rich source of eighteenth century French philosophical thinking (as well as modern variants) and is consistently delightful.
This novel completes a loosely related triptych after Pfitz and Dalambert's principle (and indeed there are echoes of these earlier works throughout the novel, and their themes permeate this new novel), and like those earlier novels works on a numer of levels. This time there are three interlinking narratives - Mr Mee's own introduction to the internet and Rosier's Encyclopaedia; the story of two copyists that disturb Jean Jacques Rousseau's peaceful retreat; and the confession of an academic studying eighteenth century French fiction.
The strands come together wonderfully.
Mr Crumey's work is very well written. His work is clever, but his intellect is worn lightly. The novels set you thinking. But, most importantly, Andrew Crumey is very funny. This novel is witty and charming.
Andrew Crumey gets better and better. I look forward to his next work.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I thought this was a good read, very ideas-based and lots to think about, and more accessible than Mobius Dick, with some fantastic moments, and a pleasing feeling of having to work things out and a slow tying together of ideas. There are lots of connections to glean and debates expanded about life and literature, and fantasy and reality: though it steered clear of being overtly metafictional.
However, I did have two small problems with it. Firstly, the chapters alternate between Mr Mee, Ferrand and Minard, and Dr Petrie. The trouble is that with three styles and characters so different, it is almost inevitable that the reader will prefer one narrative over the other two, and therefore rush through the other two chapters.
Also, I found Mr Mee's chapters frustrating as his naivety is entirely unconvincing - it's expressed largely by putting a lot of words in inverted commas, which is both irritating and unnecessary. He's an 81 year old scholar but doesn't know where his towels are kept or how to make tea, which I would almost believe if he learnt booky things quickly - but he couldn't comprehend the internet and was foxed by language itself, which just doesn't seem to add up to me.
Given what the book is about I'm wondering if this was partly Crumey's intention, but making a philosopical point doesn't always make a good story...
But nevertheless it's a v enjoyable read
However, I did have two small problems with it. Firstly, the chapters alternate between Mr Mee, Ferrand and Minard, and Dr Petrie. The trouble is that with three styles and characters so different, it is almost inevitable that the reader will prefer one narrative over the other two, and therefore rush through the other two chapters.
Also, I found Mr Mee's chapters frustrating as his naivety is entirely unconvincing - it's expressed largely by putting a lot of words in inverted commas, which is both irritating and unnecessary. He's an 81 year old scholar but doesn't know where his towels are kept or how to make tea, which I would almost believe if he learnt booky things quickly - but he couldn't comprehend the internet and was foxed by language itself, which just doesn't seem to add up to me.
Given what the book is about I'm wondering if this was partly Crumey's intention, but making a philosopical point doesn't always make a good story...
But nevertheless it's a v enjoyable read
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Gripping and very funny
The descriptions might make this book sound rather dry. It isn't. It is a gripping read, and very funny to boot. It is also delightfully clever. Read more
Published on 29 Dec 2001
A detective novel with a twist
On one level Mr. Mee is a labyrinthine detective novel which, told through several narrators, jumps from past to present in an attempt to destabilise any solution to the question:... Read more
Published on 1 May 2001
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