Rooted in the western United States in the decade after 9/11, Matthew McIntosh's epic and elliptical novel follows a young writer and his wife as he attempts to write the follow-up to his first novel. He desperately searches for a form that will express the world as it has become, even as it continually shifts all around him.
Pop-up ads, search results, web chats, snippets of conversation, lines of code, and film and television stills mix with alchemical manuscripts, classical works of literature-and the story of a man who wakes up one morning having lost his memory. His only clue to his own identity is a single blank document on his computer called theMystery.doc. From text messages to The Divine Comedy, first love to artificial intelligence, the book explores what makes us human-the stories we tell, the memories we hold on to, the memories we lose-and the relationships that give our lives meaning.
Part love story, part memoir, part documentary, part existential whodunit, theMystery.doc is a modern epic about the quest to find something lasting in a world where everything-and everyone-is in danger of slipping away.
"McIntosh is a slacker Proust, writing about the underclass of Spokane rather than the upper classes of Paris as he attempts to convert memories and experience into art...a remarkable achievement."-Steven Moore, Washington Post
