It is also an identity issue that created the story's largest problem for me. 'Identity' is its central theme, and as such, these stories address identity at enough levels to be mind-boggling or nearly so. Straka the secret messages to his friends that Straka appeared to be hiding in the novel, as they were apparently working to disrupt the workings of a major weapons manufacturer and the unfolding love story between two college students reading the book in our time.Īs a reader who firmly believes that an author's bio is critical to a complete understanding of a work, I found many of the questions raised in this book intriguing. There are basically three stories taking place here: the central novel, Ship of Theseus, written in the 40's by V.M. It's not an easy read-I don't think I've worked this hard since Absalom! Absalom!- but it's an engaging one. Abrams and written by award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, is the chronicle of two readers finding each other in the margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces they don’t understand, and it is also Abrams and Dorst’s love letter to the written word.ĭoes a trip to the supermarket become a frantic sortie into a grocerian wilderness? Do battles rage between produce and deli, with stalks of celery raining like arrows upon quivering chunks of roast beef and aged Vermont cheddar? Are the pizzas lurking in a control room behind the freezer case, broadcasting shortwave signals that force the croutons, lemminglike, to hurl themselves from the shelves to the floor where they lie, helpless, waiting to be crushed by the wheels of an approaching cart?Īnd Abrams seems to have found a kindred spirit in Doug Dorst, for the two of them have created something imaginative and beautifully original.

The readers: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.

The writer: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumors that swirl around him. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey. The book: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V.M. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author.

A world of mystery, menace, and desire.Ī young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger.

The ship of theseus book