Take a photo of a barcode or cover
laurnoble's Reviews (180)
Doug Dorst's Ship of Theseus (or S.) is the sort of immersive, engrossing experience your inner child longs for. A suspenseful – if at times overwhelming – tale of intrigue, it ropes you into a world of international conspiracy, with cheeky pepperings of sci-fi and the fantastic giving it a unique and unforgettable flavor.
The work contains the novel Ship of Theseus itself, a fictional book by the fictional V.M. Straka (the S. Morgenstern to Dorst's William Goldman), and the correspondence of Eric and Jen in the margins, with several pleasingly tactile inserts – telegrams, postcards, newspaper clippings – distributed throughout. The layering of the stories, and the non-chronological way in which Eric and Jen's marginalia unfolds, makes for a heightened suspension of disbelief, the mediation of multiple frame narratives drawing the reader deeper and deeper into Straka's dangerous world.
Jen, a disillusioned undergrad studying literature, picks up Eric's discarded book (he a disgraced and expunged graduate candidate) in their university library, setting into motion a collaborative effort of analysis that gradually unfolds into their own story. Their notes, which we can organize chronologically through the color of the pens they use, transition from remarks on the text, to questions about each other, to semi-revelatory notes about their increasingly dire situation. ("I'm SCARED," Jen writes in an early page of the book, though the reader does not find out why until much later.)
Despite all the ingredients for a page-turner, S. begins rather slowly. Jen and Eric's initial back-and-forths are awkward, sometimes trite (and to this reviewer's eye, their comments on the text lack in critical insight). The foreword to Ship of Theseus, written by a mysterious F.X. Caldeira whose footnotes pervade the rest of the text, assaults the reader with so much dubious information, information we are expected to retain and keep track of throughout, that it is difficult to approach the novel itself. Too, the novel on its own would not stand out – if suffers inconsistent prose (written in the eternally annoying third-person present-tense), awkward pacing, with gaping plot holes that are excused only by the meta-world of the author. Its final message is unclear as well – but whether Ship ultimately tells the story of the enduring power of love or the unresolvable struggle of unsung heroes against corruption is irrelevant, as both of these themes are introduced far too late into the text to be given the attention they might have deserved. But when decorated with Caldeira's self-insertions, Eric and Jen's discoveries, and the little snippets of external media that make it difficult to remember the work's entire exegesis is rooted in fiction, Ship passes as an enjoyable, complete work.
The only element of the frame story that grates and disappoints is the predictable romance between Eric and Jen. He substantially older and a tortured scholar, she younger and in a transitional period of self-actualization, their relationship is the most exhausted and bedraggled cliché. It transforms what was previously a journey text-parsing and code-breaking into a third echo of the other romances played out in the text, by extension transforming S. from the riveting mystery it promised to be into an unimpressive tale of love winning out. Their romance is especially offensive given that, according to one of Caldeira's footnotes, Straka "had little patience for those who demand an epic romance if male and female characters simply glimpse one another, let alone hold hands."
But regardless of whether the story becomes what you hoped it would be, S. still manages to capture and enthrall (in the case of this reviewer, for fifteen hours straight, at the expense of nourishment and personal hygiene). Once you make it past the seemingly impenetrable first 50 pages, what remains is a reliably entertaining adventure, a vast and textured world in which it effortless and giddying to become hopelessly lost.
The work contains the novel Ship of Theseus itself, a fictional book by the fictional V.M. Straka (the S. Morgenstern to Dorst's William Goldman), and the correspondence of Eric and Jen in the margins, with several pleasingly tactile inserts – telegrams, postcards, newspaper clippings – distributed throughout. The layering of the stories, and the non-chronological way in which Eric and Jen's marginalia unfolds, makes for a heightened suspension of disbelief, the mediation of multiple frame narratives drawing the reader deeper and deeper into Straka's dangerous world.
Spoiler
Jen, a disillusioned undergrad studying literature, picks up Eric's discarded book (he a disgraced and expunged graduate candidate) in their university library, setting into motion a collaborative effort of analysis that gradually unfolds into their own story. Their notes, which we can organize chronologically through the color of the pens they use, transition from remarks on the text, to questions about each other, to semi-revelatory notes about their increasingly dire situation. ("I'm SCARED," Jen writes in an early page of the book, though the reader does not find out why until much later.)
Despite all the ingredients for a page-turner, S. begins rather slowly. Jen and Eric's initial back-and-forths are awkward, sometimes trite (and to this reviewer's eye, their comments on the text lack in critical insight). The foreword to Ship of Theseus, written by a mysterious F.X. Caldeira whose footnotes pervade the rest of the text, assaults the reader with so much dubious information, information we are expected to retain and keep track of throughout, that it is difficult to approach the novel itself. Too, the novel on its own would not stand out – if suffers inconsistent prose (written in the eternally annoying third-person present-tense), awkward pacing, with gaping plot holes that are excused only by the meta-world of the author. Its final message is unclear as well – but whether Ship ultimately tells the story of the enduring power of love or the unresolvable struggle of unsung heroes against corruption is irrelevant, as both of these themes are introduced far too late into the text to be given the attention they might have deserved. But when decorated with Caldeira's self-insertions, Eric and Jen's discoveries, and the little snippets of external media that make it difficult to remember the work's entire exegesis is rooted in fiction, Ship passes as an enjoyable, complete work.
The only element of the frame story that grates and disappoints is the predictable romance between Eric and Jen. He substantially older and a tortured scholar, she younger and in a transitional period of self-actualization, their relationship is the most exhausted and bedraggled cliché. It transforms what was previously a journey text-parsing and code-breaking into a third echo of the other romances played out in the text, by extension transforming S. from the riveting mystery it promised to be into an unimpressive tale of love winning out. Their romance is especially offensive given that, according to one of Caldeira's footnotes, Straka "had little patience for those who demand an epic romance if male and female characters simply glimpse one another, let alone hold hands."
But regardless of whether the story becomes what you hoped it would be, S. still manages to capture and enthrall (in the case of this reviewer, for fifteen hours straight, at the expense of nourishment and personal hygiene). Once you make it past the seemingly impenetrable first 50 pages, what remains is a reliably entertaining adventure, a vast and textured world in which it effortless and giddying to become hopelessly lost.
