Blaine's Reviews > S.

I know the you who’s in the margins. I know you’re thinking hard about what you want and why– more than some people ever do. I know you can take on a challenge and kick its ass. And I know you’ve tried harder to understand me than anyone has in a long time.

S. is an interesting, challenging, multi-layered work of experimental fiction. The physical book itself is called Ship of Theseus, and it tells the story of a man who has no memory of his past, and who gets drawn into a decades long battle against corrupt arms dealer. Ship of Theseus is purported to have been written by V. M. Stratka, a mysterious figure whose true identity has been the subject of much popular and scholarly debate. Ship of Theseus is then heavily footnoted by a translator, who appears at times to be speaking in code to the author. Finally, in the margins throughout Ship of Theseus, two students are carrying on an extended conversation with each other about the book, the true identity of V. M. Stratka, and their own lives. Eric is a former graduate student, who was expelled from the college after his advisor attempted to steal some of his work about Stratka. Jen is in her last semester, and is questioning what she wants to do with her life after college.

I found the students to be the best part of S., especially Jen, who is a completely convincing character despite only appearing through notes in the margin of the novel. As the story moves along, though not simply page by page, the passage of time is marked through the two students using different colors of ink in their notes. I chose to read the book page by page, and simply try to absorb all of the different stories that were being told at once. I have seen online where others attempted to first read Ship of Theseus, then read the first set of student notes, and then each successive set of student notes, but it appears that those who tried this method found the book more difficult to follow.

I wanted to love S., but in the end I only really liked it. Perhaps because it took so long for me to read (two months), there were parts of the story that I found confusing (in particular, all of the references between characters in the novel and who they purportedly represented in the real world). It felt as though not everything I expected to be resolved in the ending was resolved, though I have since learned that this may have been deliberate, as there appears to be a steady stream of additional content online. Make no mistake, I greatly enjoyed S., and recommend it to anyone willing to try this type of experimental work of fiction. The fact that it failed to meet my very high expectations ultimately may lay with how I read it rather than with the book itself.