S.
by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
The recap
S. arrives not as an ordinary novel but as an artefact. Slide it out of its black slipcase and you are holding what looks like a well-worn library copy of Ship of Theseus, the final book by the enigmatic writer V. M. Straka. That novel is one story. The other unfolds in its margins, where two readers carry on a conversation in pencil and ink: Jen, a college senior, and Eric, a disgraced graduate student. Their notes trade theories about Straka and the secrets they suspect the book is hiding, and gradually chart their own growing connection, along with a dangerous conflict they only half understand. Postcards, photocopies, a photograph, a café napkin and a cardboard cipher wheel are tucked between the pages, waiting to be found. Conceived by J. J. Abrams and written by Doug Dorst, the book asks to be read in layers, in whatever order the reader chooses. It is a puzzle box, a literary mystery and a slow-burning relationship between two people who meet only on the page.
Why read it
For readers who love puzzles, marginalia and books as physical objects, and for anyone who has ever fallen for a stranger's handwriting.
Fun facts
- 01
The idea began when J. J. Abrams found a Robert Ludlum paperback left at Los Angeles International Airport, with a note asking whoever found it to read it and pass it on.
- 02
The sealed black slipcase is the only part of the package that carries the names Abrams and Dorst and the title S.
- 03
Mulholland Books published it on October 29, 2013.
- 04
The book comes with around two dozen loose inserts, including postcards, photocopies, a napkin and a circular cipher device.
