Scan barcode
A review by zephturner
S. by J.J. Abrams, Doug Dorst
4.0
I got this book for Christmas and just finished it.
The thing I enjoyed most about the book was the way it was structured. The whole internal/external narrative thing was very new and I liked the idea of combining in the annotations the tale of the mystery of the book and the story of the annotator's relationship.
I'm not usually one to critique books on being too open-ended or vague, but I felt that the book ended on somewhat of an anticlimax because at the last page, there were still unsolved mysteries for me - important ones, that I felt I was supposed to understand, not just an ambiguous ending. I couldn't be sure I fully understood Eric's thesis, or the current status of the old/new/new new (?) S. The authors left a lot of these things to subtext or inference because of the nature of Jen and Eric's annotations (since Jen and Eric communicated and accessed information outside of the annotations, which the reader does not have access to).
So yeah, I thought the authors left a lot of the aspects of the plot TOO vague so that the 'correct' (or even a close) interpretation could not be inferred.
I also thought the ending of S.'s narrative in the typewritten portion of the book was somewhat of an anticlimax, and I was left without a good understanding of Vévoda's ending and his place in the book.
The book, in my opinion, is worth reading just for the creative narrative style, but the plot just did not hold together for me.
The thing I enjoyed most about the book was the way it was structured. The whole internal/external narrative thing was very new and I liked the idea of combining in the annotations the tale of the mystery of the book and the story of the annotator's relationship.
I'm not usually one to critique books on being too open-ended or vague, but I felt that the book ended on somewhat of an anticlimax because at the last page, there were still unsolved mysteries for me - important ones, that I felt I was supposed to understand, not just an ambiguous ending. I couldn't be sure I fully understood Eric's thesis, or the current status of the old/new/new new (?) S. The authors left a lot of these things to subtext or inference because of the nature of Jen and Eric's annotations (since Jen and Eric communicated and accessed information outside of the annotations, which the reader does not have access to).
So yeah, I thought the authors left a lot of the aspects of the plot TOO vague so that the 'correct' (or even a close) interpretation could not be inferred.
I also thought the ending of S.'s narrative in the typewritten portion of the book was somewhat of an anticlimax, and I was left without a good understanding of Vévoda's ending and his place in the book.
The book, in my opinion, is worth reading just for the creative narrative style, but the plot just did not hold together for me.