One person can remember the book, and indeed still has a copy. A childhood friend of the disappeared book's disappeared author, he's one of the narrators of this Alchemist's Apprentice, and soon after the book opens he finds a second copy of Rhodes' book in a Hay-on-Wye bookshop and thinks he might finally be able to solve the riddle of the disappearance. (The second narrator is the disappeared author of the disappeared book).
The real author of the original Alchemist's Apprentice (are you still with me?, the one who's disappeared) unknowingly gains the ability to change reality, changing his train to East Anglia into a rather more worrying train in Stalin's Russia, leading to interrogation and worse, gets out by the skin of his teeth and learns how to use his new power - leading to the whole intertwined spiral story. The beginning and end are good and clearly thoroughly worked out, but in the middle it gets a bit boring...so then I magicked up some money, then a car, then a house, then a good party...
An intricate book. Worth reading.
Seán 21/4/02