I read Scarlett Thomas’ The End of Mr. Y after I was attracted by the highly wantable cover last year and I loved it. I was aware that she had written other stuff, notably PopCo and always thought I’d get round to reading Pop Co at some point but it was only when they changed the cover of PopCo to match The End of Mr. Y cover did I suddenly really want to read it, which goes to show that I’m shallow and how you design a product really works.
I’m about a 100 pages into PopCo and so far there’s been a lot about toy marketing (PopCo is a toy company), cryptography and lateral thinking. It’s an ‘interesting’ book, the main character, who I’m convinced has Aspergers (although I’m prone to spotting it in anything) as she dislikes crowded places, has trouble getting on with people and is good at puzzles, works for PopCo. She and her colleagues are at a company retreat where they are given a special project. So far there’s been hints about a troubled background and someone is leaving the main character coded messages. Other than that I’m sort of waiting for something to happen, but Scarlett Thomas definitely has a unique writing style.
