I first heard of S. in a buzzfeed article about the best books of 2013. I downloaded a sample from the iBooks store and quickly realized that I was already hooked and that the book required to be physically held and not electronically downloaded.
One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.
A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.
The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey.
The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him.
The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.
S., conceived by filmmaker J. J. Abrams and written by award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, is the chronicle of two readers finding each other in the margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces they don’t understand, and it is also Abrams and Dorst’s love letter to the written word.
It's sold in shrink wrap so none of the inserts can be lost, and the book itself is in a slipcover. But once you remove the book from the slipcover the story begins. The book is made to look like it was printed half a century ago, with faded yellow pages, sewn binding, and even details like library stamps and a dewey decimal sticker on the binding.
S. is two stories in one. First The Ship of Theseus written by the mysterious V.M. Straka tells the story of an amnesiac who is shanghaied-abducted and forced into a type of slavery either servitude as was the more likely case for men or the horrible sex trade usually preying on women- onto a monstrous ship while having to find himself in his memories. Written in the margins is the other story- the story of college senior Jen and expelled grad student Eric who end up finding each other while trying to find the truth of V.M. Straka's identity.
One good aspect about Jen and Eric's story not being the prose is that it doesn't give Abrams a chance to sideline Jen's character like he does with a lot of the female characters he directs. Even though we only hear their voices through annotations and notes to each other, Eric and Jen are fleshed out characters that you can't help but root for. And the mystery they find themselves in is classical and intriguing, despite starting as only fodder for a dissertation a handful of people would ever read. It quickly evolves in a global thriller filled with death threats, pseudocide, and hidden identities.
It's a little complicated to read in that its a lot of flipping around and playing with add ins, but honestly they're so worth it. They make the story even more engaging and realistic. And it captures that fantastical dream I know I had about falling in love in college.
I give it a 4 out of 5, and highly recommend it. Especially since it lends itself so easily to re-reads.
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