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Loading... Special Topics in Calamity Physicsby Marisha Pessl
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Not quite the successor to Donna Tartt's The Secret History as promised in the promotional material but certainly a great read with a few surprises. This is a truly bizarre novel, one that held my attention throughout, but I still wasn’t sure if I liked it, even at the end. The protagonist, Blue Van Meer, narrates her last year in high school and its strange events as if she is writing a thesis, complete with bibliographic references. In fact, the endless parenthetical references get a little tiresome and cutesy. The novel feels overwritten, stuffed as it is with metaphors and similes, some of them quite improbable. And the final twists, even when they come, are both completely unexpected and somewhat unbelievable. Still I bought it, partly thanks to the last section, written like a final exam, which serves as an epilogue and sheds some light-or questions-on key plot points. Smart and unexpected, Marisha Pessl’s Special topics in Calamity Physics is unlike any novel I’ve ever read. The narrator is high school student, Blue van Meer, a girl raised by her father, a professor, who constantly moves them around the country, with literature and political science replacing the typical background noise of a car radio. Blue is an intellectual in her own right, an astute observer of the mechanics of the world around her, with understandings uncommon for someone her age. “A. Boone [the desk clerk at the police station] continued to chew the coffee stirrer and stared at me. He was what Dad commonly called a ‘power distender,’ a person who seized the moment in which he/she possessed a marginal amount of power and brutally rationed it so it lasted an unreasonable amount of time.” Blue becomes involved with a bizarre group of friends, led by an enigmatic and unstable teacher at her newest school. The story involves teen relationships, mystery, social mores, murder and more. This gripping coming of age novel is at times funny and ironic, many times poignant. Each chapter title is named for a piece of literature, and throughout the book there are annotations by Blue, comparing her experiences to various pieces of writing, music and art. “The girl…nervously bared her long and pointy teeth (see ‘Venus Flytrap,’ North American Flora, Starnes, 1989).” Relating all of her experiences like a third person observing from a distance, Blue’s unique voice comes out loud and clear. Is the book pretensious? A little. But in Blue van Meer and her father, Pessl has created characters not easily forgotten. A lot of people on my assorted friends' lists have been remarkably impressed by this. I would have been more inclined to be so if (a) the author had been less convinced herself of what a clever ickle girl she was, (b) most of her allusions and references had not been invented and the remainder were not quite so banal, and (c) if the Surprise Ending had not been quite so blindingly obvious from the word go. no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0143112120, Paperback)“Dazzling,” (People) “Exuberant,” (Vogue) “marvelously entertaining,” (The Dallas Morning News) Marisha Pessl’s mesmerizing debut has critics raving and heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center of this “cracking good read”4 is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway school, she finds some—a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel—with “visual aids” drawn by the author—that has won over readers of all ages.(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:16 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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I listened to this on audiobook. Though the reader (Emily Janice Card) was fantastic, the "visual aids" (illustrations) and other textual ornamentation would have been a nice addition. I picked up a hardcover copy at the library, so I was able to see what I was missing. Card was one of the best female readers I've ever heard; the story would have simply been better to experience as intended. (