Thomas, Scarlett 1972–

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Thomas, Scarlett 1972–

PERSONAL:

Born July 5, 1972, in London, England; daughter of Francesca (an actress, political activist, and teacher) and Gordian Troeller (a manager in the music industry and racehorse business owner); partner of Tom Fraser. Education: Graduated from University of East London (first class honors). Politics: Old Labour; Socialist. Hobbies and other interests: Homeopathy, malfunctioning 60s architecture, artistic manifestoes, recreational mathematics, cricket, playing guitar and flute, visiting museums.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Kent, England. Agent—Simon Trewin, PFD, Drury House, 34-43 Russell St., London WC2B 5HA, England.

CAREER:

Writer. University of Kent, England, teacher of English literature and creative writing.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Book of the Year, Independent on Sunday, 1999, for In Your Face; named one of the twenty best young British writers by the Independent on Sunday, 2001; Elle Style Award, 2002, for Going Out.

WRITINGS:

"LILY PASCALE" TRILOGY; MYSTERY

Dead Clever, Hodder and Stoughton (London, England), 1998, Justin, Charles (Boston, MA), 2003.

In Your Face, Hodder and Stoughton (London, England), 1999, Justin, Charles (Boston, MA) 2004.

Seaside, Hodder and Stoughton (London, England), 2000.

NOVELS

Bright Young Things, Flame (London, England), 2001.

Going Out, Fourth Estate (London, England), 2002, Anchor/Vintage (New York, NY), 2004.

PopCo, Fourth Estate (London, England), 2004.

The End of Mr. Y, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2006.

Contributor to anthologies, including All Hail the New Puritans and Big Night Out. Contributor to newspapers and magazines, including Guardian, Butterfly, Black Book, Literary Review, Scotland on Sunday, and Independent on Sunday. Writer of radio play Why My Grandmother Learned to Play the Flute, experimental story/soundscape broadcast on Radio 4 (London, England), 2003.

ADAPTATIONS:

Trillion Entertainment has optioned feature film rights to Bright Young Things; Greenlit Productions has optioned feature film rights to Going Out.

SIDELIGHTS:

Hailed as one of the twenty best young British writers by the Independent on Sunday in 2001, Scarlett Thomas writes fiction centering on unorthodox young people often leading rather bohemian lives in England. She has written mysteries featuring an independent young woman detective, Lily Pascale, as well as novels outside the genre, and she contributed a short story to the anthology All Hail the New Puritans. This anthology aroused controversy with its manifesto calling for simple, straightforward prose, eschewing such devices as flashbacks and poetic license. In an interview published on her Home Page, Thomas characterized All Hail the New Puritans as something of "an experiment, to see what would happen if those particular writers were given those particular rules," but also endorsed other styles of storytelling, saying, "It's the skill of the writer that determines whether a piece of writing works, not rules." Numerous reviewers have praised Thomas's skill; for instance, Independent on Sunday contributor Murrough O'Brien, critiquing Going Out, described her writing as "deeply original and provocative."

Dead Clever, Thomas's debut novel, introduces Pascale, a "smart, hip, and brilliant" sleuth, in the words of USA Today commentator Carol Memmott. Twenty-five-year-old Pascale, tired of life in London, returns to her hometown of Devon, where she finds a job teaching literature at a university. She loves detective stories, and she becomes a real-life detective after a student is raped and murdered and a witness dies under mysterious circumstances. Pascale's investigation brings her into contact with drug dealers, cult leaders, and a variety of other bizarre characters. "Solid narrative and engaging dialog hold it all together," reported Rex E. Klett in Library Journal. A Kirkus Reviews critic was unimpressed, however, finding Pascale "drab" and the tale "preposterous." Memmott, on the other hand, deemed the story "slightly far-fetched but very Mary Shelleyish," adding: "It's sure to satisfy readers who prefer a more literary crime novel." A Publishers Weekly reviewer summed up Dead Clever as an "engaging mystery … full of attractive characters in a lovingly evoked setting."

Thomas continued Pascale's adventures in two more mysteries: In Your Face, which finds her trying to solve the murders of three young women who had discussed their experiences with stalkers in a magazine article written by a friend of Lily's, and Seaside, in which a teenage woman apparently commits suicide—but her surviving twin sister claims to be the dead girl. Scotland on Sunday contributor Susie Maguire deemed the latter book Thomas's "best to date."

Thomas next published Bright Young Things, a novel about six youths, all highly intelligent but frustrated with their lives, who are brought together when they answer a newspaper advertisement seeking "bright young things" for a "big project." When they report for their interviews, they are drugged, abducted, and taken to a faraway island. Some reviewers compared the novel to the television series Big Brother, in which strangers were forced to share a house, and Alex Garland's novel The Beach, about young Europeans on a Thai island. "It is right on the zeitgeist," related Vicky Allan in Scotland on Sunday, while Steve Jelbert, writing in the London Times, thought the book "wickedly satirized" hip young people.

Going Out deals with twenty-five-year-old Luke, who is allergic to the sun and therefore has never left the home he shares with his cloying mother. He gets his perceptions of the world from television, the Internet, and his friend Julie, who is brilliant at mathematics but nonetheless unambitious, satisfied with being a waitress. They must leave their respective routines behind, however, when Luke decides to travel to meet a man who offers him a cure. Julie and a collection of quirky companions accompany him. London Daily Mail reviewer Amber Pearson described the story as "a modern take on The Wizard of Oz," while Scotsman critic Casron Howat found the book "heartwarming and definitely funny."

Thomas' next novel, PopCo, was described by the author to CA: as "my longest book so far (it's twice as long as Going Out), and the most ambitious. It's mainly about a toy company, and the process of developing a new idea in a remote, corporate ‘thought camp.’ But it's also about seventeenth-century pirates, World War II, early computing, number theory, secret codes, and ways of resisting authority. It's this crazy mix of things and I really hope it works." In an interview with Bookslut Web site reviewer Colleen Mondor, Thomas mentioned that she looked at PopCo as "the third book in a trilogy (the first two being Bright Young Things, and Going Out). All three are about the effects of pop culture on people, and each one comes at the problem in a slightly different way."

Thomas followed up PopCo with what Mondor described as "the genre busting" The End of Mr. Y. The novel's heroine, graduate student Ariel Manto, gets her hands on a copy of a supposedly cursed book, The End of Mr. Y, by nineteenth-century scientist Thomas E. Lumas, who died soon after writing it—along with everyone else ever involved with the book. This, however, does not deter Ariel. Through the book, she learns how to access the Troposphere, a place where one can travel through time and space via the thoughts of others. Ariel soon finds herself embarking on an adventure that could end up costing her her life.

Many critics applauded Thomas' efforts with The End of Mr. Y, like Mondor, who felt that "with Mr. Y, Thomas showed again her utter fearlessness when it comes to attacking the big subjects and her determination to bring philosophical discussions into the realm of highly readable and entertaining literature." Critic Charlene Martel, in her review of The End of Mr. Y for the Literary Word Web site, noted that "this book explores so many theories about science, faith, consciousness, death and more. It's a book that will excite the senses, inspire the imagination, and tease the intellect." Martel added that "the author has a way of drawing the reader into the book, even when just sharing details of Ariel's day to day life. The characters are vivid, realistic and very easy to connect with." New York Times Book Review contributor Gregory Cowles felt that "amid all the novel's engaging questions about the nature of reality, it's hard to get worked up about a subplot that has Ariel traveling through time to save laboratory mice. Still, she spins Derrida and subatomic theory into a wholly enchanting alternate universe that should appeal to a wide popular audience, and that's something no deconstructionist or physicist has managed to do."

Thomas once told CA: "I find the world a rather confusing, often alienating place. I always wanted to explore this and to create imaginary utopias where the anxieties of contemporary life can be resolved. Narrative is a good place to find resolution, if that's what you are seeking. In my most recent books, Bright Young Things, Going Out, and PopCo, the characters tend to go on journeys of some sort. I think that's important.

"My work is influenced by a lot of reading. The more I write, the more I seem to read. I go to a public library every day with a flask of coffee. Paul Erdos once said that a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into proofs. Perhaps an author is another kind of machine—it's the same fuel but you get a different result at the end. I like writing in public spaces. It keeps me connected with what I am writing about.

"When I read an exciting writer, that gives me more inspiration than anything. Jean Baudrillard, William Gibson, Douglas Coupland, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, and Mary Shelley have all influenced me in some way. I read a lot of math and science books too, which send my imagination racing. Recently, I found Stanley Milgram's study, ‘Obedience to Authority,’ absolutely fascinating.

"I was quite unpleasantly surprised by the ‘corporate’ side of writing. I never realized how much of writing is driven by sales and marketing targets, and how your readership can be determined by bookshop policy. It is also much less glamorous than I thought it would be, which is probably a good thing.

"Occasionally I get e-mails from people who say that one of my books has made them look at the world in a slightly different way, or even better, that the book has made them feel that they are not the only person experiencing loneliness or confusion or alienation. Getting an e-mail like that beats even the most brilliant review. In my books, it's ok to be a dreamer, to walk out of your job, to become a vegetarian, to try to start a revolution. I want my books to make people realize that these things are all completely ok—that they are desirable and logical in the world in which we live. On another level, I want my books to make people think, ‘Huh?,’ to make the reader try to solve the puzzles (there are lots of puzzles in PopCo), and to feel happy, at least on some level, at the end."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August 1, 2006, Allison Block, review of The End of Mr. Y, p. 44.

Bookseller, June 8, 2007, Benedicte Page, review of The End of Mr. Y, p. 21.

Daily Mail (London, England), August 9, 2002, Amber Pearson, review of Going Out, p. 54.

Independent on Sunday (London, England), April 13, 2003, Murrough O'Brien, review of Going Out, p. 19; July 13, 2007, Roz Kaveney, review of The End of Mr. Y.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2002, review of Dead Clever, p. 1740; July 15, 2006, review of The End of Mr. Y, p. 698.

Library Journal, January, 2003, Rex E. Klett, review of Dead Clever, p. 162; October 15, 2006, Andrea Kempf, review of The End of Mr. Y, p. 56.

New York Times Book Review, October 29, 2006, Gregory Cowles, "Reading Minds," p. 26.

Publishers Weekly, December 16, 2002, review of Dead Clever, p. 48; June 26, 2006, review of The End of Mr. Y, p. 26.

Scotland on Sunday, October 24, 1999, Susie Maguire, review of Seaside, p. 11; March 11, 2001, Vicky Allan, review of Bright Young Things, p. 12.

Scotsman, March 29, 2003, Casron Howat, review of Going Out, p. 6.

Times (London, England), August 4, 2001, Steve Jelbert, review of Bright Young Things.

Times Literary Supplement, August 3, 2007, "Go to the Goose Fair," p. 19.

USA Today, April 17, 2003, Carol Memmott, "‘Dead Clever’ Unveils a Hip Literary Detective," p. 5D.