S. by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams is a unique and interactive novel presented as a story within a story. The book features various inserts and notes in the margins, creating a multi-layered reading experience. Readers navigate through different plots and clues, deciphering annotations and unraveling mysteries hidden within the pages.
The narrative of S. unfolds as two people engage in a complex exchange of notes and messages in the margins of a library book, adding depth and intrigue to the main storyline. The book incorporates elements like postcards, napkins, bookmarks, and other props, enhancing the storytelling experience and blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
There are medium content warnings for themes related to existential dread, ambiguity, and complex relationships.
Has Romance?
There is a medium level of romance in the book as the relationship between the two main characters develops through their notes.
From The Publisher:
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.
Ratings (16)
Incredible (3) | |
Loved It (7) | |
Liked It (3) | |
It Was OK (1) | |
Did Not Like (2) |
Reader Stats (72):
Read It (14) | |
Currently Reading (4) | |
Want To Read (45) | |
Not Interested (9) |
2 comment(s)
Multiple personality disorder plot
There's something to be said about a book as an art form and not just a piece of literature, and that's why I gave this four stars, rather than the three it probably deserves. The way its put together, creates an illusion that really sucks you in.
I feel I may have read this book the wrong way, (page by page) but I didn't get as sucked into the illusion that the beautifully constructed book physically represents. About halfway through I couldn't help but feel like I should have read Ship of Theseus first, and then all of the marginalia, in the order the colors of the ink indicates.
The ending was a bit unsatisfying as a result of reading it in such a non-linear way... But then, I watched all of Lost, I probably should have expected that. [ • • ]. In the introductory chapter it's stated that the last chapter was lost, and the translator did their best to recreate it. Naturally JJ Abrams didn't let the story stay within the confines of the book, and there are Twitter/Tumblr accounts for both of the main characters and they detail several alternative versions of the final chapter, which I admittedly have yet to dive into.
I did thoroughly enough the book, even with its faults. I just wish the story was more engaging.
What can you read after
S.?
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