The Book of the Most Precious Substance, by Sara Gran

Trigger warning for briefly nonconsensual BDSM.

The word “uneven” is used frequently in book reviews, but I’ve stayed away from it because I’ve always thought it was too vague. Does the reviewer mean that the quality of the writing is uneven? That some elements of the story are better than others? But when I finished reading The Book of the Most Precious Substance, by Sara Gran, the only adjective I could come up with for this strange, unsatisfying book is uneven. But I won’t leave you to wonder what I mean by uneven, I promise.

Lily Albrecht’s life is in a holding pattern. Five years ago, her husband began to suffer from early-onset dementia. She’s been selling books—instead of writing her own—to make money ever since. She’s had to count every penny to make sure that their home health aid can be paid, that the bills can be paid, that the mortgage can be paid…and on and on. It’s a stressful life and Lily doesn’t have the energy to devote to anything other than the daily grind. When a colleague in the rare book trade offers her a cut of the finder’s fee for a book so obscure and mysterious that someone is willing to pay millions for it, it sparks something of her old spirit.

And then, things start to get weird.

First, Lily’s colleague is murdered before he can really tell her anything about the eponymous Book of the Most Precious Substance or its potential buyer. Next, another colleague steps in—sexy librarian Lucas—to help and my but he is very eager to drop everything and tempt Lily. And third, a future version of Lily starts to drop hints that all of this intrigue is going to go bad. Before any of the bad stuff can happen, though, Lily (and us readers) learn that the Book has magical powers. This isn’t the first time a magical MacGuffin codex featured in a literary thriller’s plot but it is (as far as I know) the first time that the magic turns out to be sex magic. Aleister Crowley is referenced more than once. (The Last Podcast on the Left has a fantastic series on Crowley, starting at episode 442, which I recommend to folks who don’t mind a lot of vulgarity.) The magic in the Book is activated in a way that makes my librarian soul gag a bit; it’s definitely not hygienic and will absolutely shorten the life of the codex.

Lily and Lucas bounce around the United States and France, searching for the last copies of the Book, while also working their way through the steps of its magic. Apparently, they do the magic steps because funsies? The magic can grant power and wishes but that isn’t explicitly spelled out for most of the book. What is explicitly spelled out are several sex scenes, meaning that readers will need to practice their poker faces if they want to read this book in public. Except, sometimes, sex scenes fade to black, as if Gran wasn’t sure whether or not to fully commit to turning The Book of the Most Precious Substance into erotic, instead of trying to stay on the side of erotic thriller.

And this is where I circle back to the unevenness of The Book of the Most Precious Substance. The strange back-and-forth of explicit scenes and fade-to-black scenes is just the most obvious expression, I think. I also noticed that sometimes the plot would race along in some places, without many lines given to explain why the characters are motivated to do what they do. Some characters get extensive backstories (such as Lily’s husband, who is mostly off-page) while others get scarcely any description or backstory at all. Outside of bedrooms, hardly any of the setting is described at all. It all makes for a strange reading experience, as though the text is zooming in and out too far all the time. I found it jarring.

In the end, when the plot started to race before coming to an almost-dead stop in an extended denouement, all I can say is that I didn’t really like this book. Readers who are intrigued by the premise might like that the book/sex magic appears to work but I would only recommend this book to folks who are prepared for the explicit sex which, at one point, edges into nonconsensual BDSM acts.