S. is not just a book; it’s a literary puzzle box. To summarise it, one must acknowledge that one is actually reading two stories at once: the fictional novel Ship of Theseus by the mysterious V.M. Straka, and the marginalia (the handwritten notes) between two graduate students, Eric and Jen, who are trying to uncover Straka’s identity. There's actually three layers of narrative, which essentially required me to read each of the ten chapters multiple times. The first layer is the narrative that is actually depicted by the fictional novel. Then there's the narrative going on between the two readers, who are communicating multiple times via the notes they leave on each chapter. They do this multiple times, uding different ink-colour combinations. And of course, there is the third layer, the narrative between the author and the translator, which is only revealed via the investigative efforts of Jen and Eric.
So yes, S. blew my head. I had to figure out which ink-colour combinations were reflective of the chronological conversations between Jen and Eric. First it was the black and blue pens. Then came green and orange. It was followed by red and purple. And finally, there was black on black. Good thing they had different handwriting styles. And of course there are also inserts, consisting of random articles, such as postcards, newspaper cutouts, even a restaurant napkin was inserted. All of these acted as clues that slowly unraveled the multi-layered narratives this book presented.
And of course, there was also the series of ciphers. Each chapter had a cipher, which needed to be decoded. These ciphers acted as a way for the translator to communicate to the author. And yes, not every cipher was easy to decode. Again, this book was absolutely challenging.
Overall, I had fun reading this. If you want something different, then definitely pick this book up. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.
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