Special Topics in Calamity Physics

published	August 3rd 2006 by Viking Adult
binding	Hardcover
isbn	067003777X (isbn13: 9780670037773)
pages	528
description	This mesmerizing debut, uncannily uniting the trials of a postmodern upbringing with a murder mystery, heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in literary fiction ...more [close] This mesmerizing debut, uncannily uniting the trials of a postmodern upbringing with a murder mystery, heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in literary fiction Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer. After a childhood moving from one academic outpost to another with her father (a man prone to aphorisms and meteoric affairs), Blue is clever, deadpan, and possessed of a vast lexicon of literary, political, philosophical, and scientific knowledge—and is quite the cineaste to boot. In her final year of high school at the elite (and unusual) St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, Blue falls in with a charismatic group of friends and their captivating teacher, Hannah Schneider. But when the drowning of one of Hannah's friends and the shocking death of Hannah herself lead to a confluence of mysteries, Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her gimlet-eyed instincts and cultural references to guide—or misguide—her. Structured around a syllabus for a Great Works of Literature class and containing ironic visual aids (drawn by the author), Pessl's debut novel is complex yet compelling, erudite yet accessible. It combines the suspense of Hitchcock, the self-parody of Dave Eggers, and the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt with a dazzling intelligence and wit entirely Pessl's own. [close]
date added	11-17-06 edit book

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Sarah rated it:

10/18/07

Read in October, 2007

There’s a special cold black place in my heart for writers under thirty who come out of nowhere with a best-selling much-praised first novel for which they receive huge advances and instant fame. The feeling is called jealousy - deep, shoulda-been-me jealousy that clouds my ability to judge the book itself.

Which brings us to Marisha Pessl and Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Every big review I read of it was glowing and every writer under thirty I talked to said it was a piece of steami...more There’s a special cold black place in my heart for writers under thirty who come out of nowhere with a best-selling much-praised first novel for which they receive huge advances and instant fame. The feeling is called jealousy - deep, shoulda-been-me jealousy that clouds my ability to judge the book itself.

Which brings us to Marisha Pessl and Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Every big review I read of it was glowing and every writer under thirty I talked to said it was a piece of steaming shit (but that I should totally read the novel they’re working on). Turns out that my opinion falls somewhere squarely in the middle.

The parts of the book that failed were the overly-quirky bits and the gimmicky bits. Although the narrator is characterized as smart and scholarly, much of the book is over-written, especially during slow periods. What do I mean by over-written? Describing a pair of boots as being “the shape of Italy” or someone’s face being shaped like “a box of Valentines Day candy.” Say the boots were shaped like boots! Say the woman had a heart-shaped face!

Pessl leans hard on the simile and the metaphor in this book, many times at the expense of simple, straightforward description. By having a complex, intelligent narrator, she’s trying to say, “I’m doing it on purpose!” but it still seems indulgent and silly and, ultimately, keeps us holding her world at arm’s length.

Pessl also struggles with dialogue and realistic characters - often I found myself thinking, that high school student would never say that or that gas station attendant would never say that. All of the characters tended to sound the same and think the same. Sure, if it was a high school student, Pessl would add some “likes” and a reference to J-Lo, but mostly, the person would sound like the voice of the narrator, a voice which I am guessing is the voice of Pessl herself.

But there is some beautiful writing in the book. Entire chapters were - I’ll say it - riveting. Without exception, the riveting chapters were the chapters with a lot of action in them - chapters where it felt like Pessl forgot that she was a writer trying to impress people with her first novel. In these chapters boots were boot-shaped, the language was natural, and the characters got to act like themselves.

These good chapters led me to the conclusion that Pessl’s problem might be discipline. She doesn’t know when to cut out the cute or overly-wrought stuff yet. The Writing Buddha says, kill your children and Pessl, time and again, couldn’t manage to do that. The result is a book filled with things that made the author smile, dalliances, and clever asides that don’t do much except make the book longer. I suspect she also lacked an editor who could kill those children for her.

The plot was ‘aight. It was a pretty basic murder mystery formula and I guessed the end 150 pages before the end happened even though I’m not good at guessing endings. It would have been much better and much more fast-moving if, again, someone - author or editor - had cut it down to a more manageable length.

Where does that leave us? I think Pessl’s got some talent. I think that, for a first novel, this was an achievement. On the other hand, she’s got a ways to go and I hope all of the praise does not set her more firmly in some of her ways. Talent is something you’re born with and being born with talent is easy. Now she’s got some hard work ahead of her - about learning when to hold back and about learning about the human condition outside of her own privileged experiences.
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Patrick rated it:

08/29/07

Read in September, 2006

recommends it for: easily impressed high school students

Reviews of “Special Topics in Calamity Physics” and the Bottle of Açaí Juice I Bought for Lunch Cleverly Masked as SAT Test Questions

Choices:
(a) Special Topics in Calamity Physics
(b) The bottle of açaí juice I bought for lunch
(c) Both a and b
(d) Neither a nor b

Questions
(1) __ I had heard good things about it
(2) __ I bought it on a whim
(3) __ If feeling extremely charitable, I might call it “frothy”
(4) __ It seemed sort of good in the begin...more

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11 comments

James rated it:

06/18/08

Read in June, 2008

I really wanted to like this book.

But it’s a train wreck. The literary carnage is so grotesque and horrifying, you can’t help but look, read. (And I promise you, just take my word for it, that metaphor is better than most that Pessl uses in this debut novel of hers.)

Despite what Bayard says, it’s amazing what happens when you stop talking about a text and actually interact with it. I’ll tell you what happens: disappointment. Utter, utter disappointment.

For all intents and pur...more

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Anne rated it:

(review of isbn 0143112120)

10/01/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: anyone who once loved The Secret History, spawn of academics, over-readers

Special Topics... has certainly stirred the passions of readers and critics...especially those who love-to-hate first novels by young, successful authors. At the sight of Marisha Pessl's author photo -- lovely, unsmiling introspective waif -- I had to hold down my hate reflex with both arms, both legs, and my forehead. Yet twenty pages later, any evidence of hate (or even a struggle) was gone. I was captivated.

Blue Van Meer lost her mother at a very young age and now hops around the ...more Special Topics... has certainly stirred the passions of readers and critics...especially those who love-to-hate first novels by young, successful authors. At the sight of Marisha Pessl's author photo -- lovely, unsmiling introspective waif -- I had to hold down my hate reflex with both arms, both legs, and my forehead. Yet twenty pages later, any evidence of hate (or even a struggle) was gone. I was captivated.

Blue Van Meer lost her mother at a very young age and now hops around the country with her uber-academic, Clooney-esque father, a political science professor. They decide to spend her senior year of high school in one place -- Stockton, NC -- where Blue attends a prestigious private school and attracts the interest of Hannah Schneider, a beautiful and mysterious film studies teacher who mentors an exclusive clique of students, the Bluebloods. The closer our heroine gets to this group and to Hannah, and the more she uncovers about a series of mysterious deaths, the more she discovers about her own past. The mystery made my heart pound and my inner teenager recall the taste of liquor mixed with lip balm. Pessl reveals -- subtlely but powerfully -- that difference between how teenagers see their lives (a whirlwind of importance, majesty, and despair) and the reality of them. Blue is so smart and well-read, yet she's also believably naive, self-critical, self-aggrandizing. I also love how Pessl describes the relationship between Blue and her father. It's hard to write father-daughter stuff in a way that isn't cheesy or disturbing, but this works. I do have some issues with the rendering of Hannah and the Bluebloods...I wanted to know more about them and their relationships with Blue but wound up just thinking rather poorly of them--which was disappointing. And it's weird that someone named Blue would be in a clique called the Bluebloods. (Excuse me while I put on some Joni Mitchell.)

The way this book is written is noteworthy, but style and form illuminate rather than eclipse the story. Special Topics... is organized like a college syllabus for a lit course; each chapter is named after a novel that is at least loosely thematically related (Wuthering Heights, Women in Love, and so forth) to its contents, and throughout, no source is left uncited. Well beyond its ToC, the book pokes fun at academia and living too much in books/films/etc., but it does so with such joy...the cited quotations bloom from, rather than merely garnish, the text. They also show what a life of reading gives us...what a gift it can be. I was reminded of the debate in History Boys about using quotations as little showy flourishes vs. using them to really engage with an issue. Pessl does both, and she pokes fun at the former while showing the limitations even of the latter. And I must say that I love the voluptuous vocabulary of this book, its brimming wit and beauty; it feels just right for these characters and this story.

Special Topics is not a perfect book, and there were certainly moments when I rolled my eyes (but I imagine that Pessl will roll hers too, or is already rolling them, as she ages gracefully into an even better writer) at the grandiosity of it all. But I'm grateful that people are willing to go there, to write like this and feel like this and create a world and a character I wanted to stay with for much, much longer. "Spare" writing has its place, but so does the lush. I applaud it....less

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Jason rated it:

06/27/07

Read in June, 2007

(Full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

Okay, I'll admit it -- that whenever I hear of another young, good-looking first-time author in New York getting an obscenely high advance on their first book and suddenly becoming The Talk Of The Town, I automatically become suspicious, as sure a response from me as Pavlov's dogs salivating at the sound of their little bell. And that's because I've been around various people in the New York lit...more (Full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

Okay, I'll admit it -- that whenever I hear of another young, good-looking first-time author in New York getting an obscenely high advance on their first book and suddenly becoming The Talk Of The Town, I automatically become suspicious, as sure a response from me as Pavlov's dogs salivating at the sound of their little bell. And that's because I've been around various people in the New York literary industry now long enough to know, that many of the decisions in that industry are made with the same immature dysfunction of a high-school Homecoming dance; that those who are chosen to become the next "Belle of the Ball" have been chosen perhaps because they're physically attractive, or popular, or are having sex with the captain of the football team, or have personality types that are easy to sell to others, or any of another thousand reasons besides that they simply deserve it.

And indeed, as I started making my way this week through Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics, the latest book from the literary world to be guilty of all the things mentioned above, the news didn't seem good; that for its first couple of hundred pages, the entire thing comes off as a grandly pretentious excuse for MFA holders to justify the years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars they wasted to get that degree in the first place. The story of gifted child and snotty high-school senior Blue van Meer, the novel at first seems like it'll be going down the same well-worn path made most famous by the 1989 movie Heathers -- wherein a group of precocious teenagers who worship the pop culture of their grandparents' generation stand around not acting like teenagers at all, spouting world-weary attitudes that most high-schoolers have difficulty even understanding, much less affecting. And it doesn't help, of course, that Pessl's writing style simply screams "please love me for all the big words I know, and I hope my cutesy intellectual diversions keep your mind off the fact that the plot isn't actually very good" (see Your Superfluous Postmodern Footnotes Make Me Want to Stab You in the Head: Why No One in their Twenties Should Ever Be Allowed to Read David Foster Wallace, J. Pettus, 7th ed.).

But then...but then. But then I started getting further along into the book, started getting used to the odd halting style of Pessl's writing. And I started realizing that there were other intriguing things going on in the story as well, multiple layers that Pessl was laying down in such a subtle way to not even be noticable at first -- for example, like the infinitely complex relationship Blue has with her intolerably snotty professor father Gareth, of the hermetically tight situation they have formed because of Blue's mother being dead and the two of them living in a different city every year. Or of the way Blue finally and slowly starts acting like an actual teen as the book progresses; the way she lashes out emotionally in awkward situations, her tendency to take the things said to her much too literally, even as she believes herself to be too smart and much too educated to succumb to such immaturity.

What quickly starts......less

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Tori rated it:

12/07/07

Struck by a severe attack of the cutes, an over-worked bag of metaphors, and flimsy characterization. The dialogue is unnatural and in most cases unfitting for the characters (Dee and Dum's conversations in particular strike me as unreal for high schoolers). Most of these things are stylistic and, while annoying to read, can be groomed out with some forethought and good editing. The book, as has been acknowledged by other people, could easily be a hundred pages shorter than it is.

Blue I fou...more Struck by a severe attack of the cutes, an over-worked bag of metaphors, and flimsy characterization. The dialogue is unnatural and in most cases unfitting for the characters (Dee and Dum's conversations in particular strike me as unreal for high schoolers). Most of these things are stylistic and, while annoying to read, can be groomed out with some forethought and good editing. The book, as has been acknowledged by other people, could easily be a hundred pages shorter than it is.

Blue I found sympathetic as a teenager who related more easily with books and films than actual people. It's natural, and forgiveable, for a girl as sheltered as she to fall under the spell of the Bluebloods, the beautiful people you find at any high school. Eventually she learns that they are not worth knowing--a fact of growing up and graduating from teenagerhood.

So if the Bluebloods are fascinating only due to their looks (which exert a gravitational pull on the eyes of everyone else, thereby inflating their fascination even for people like Blue who, as her dad might say, should know better), what about Hannah? The entire novel is predicated on the premise that Hannah is worth writing/talking/freakishly obessing over. The Bluebloods do it. Blue does it. Her dad does it, if Blue's suppositions about Gareth and Hannah's ongoing affair are correct. But what blows the whole novel for me is not the excessive hyperbole and verbal diarhea, but Hannah. She's not worth it. I can't buy into the obsession because Pessl can't make her worth the interest.

We're supposed to find her incredibly fascinating because Blue tells us she is fascinating, insists ad nauseum that Hannah is a Movie Star, a walking Tragic Past slash Freaking Rubiks Cube (see Redundant and Overused Gimmicks of Modern Literature, Pessl 2006). Yet there's nothing about Hannah herself that lives up to the hype. Agreed, she's a bit strange, melodramatic, and probably depressed. She's gorgeous in a classic, 1940s femme fatale kind of way, and she likes to samba with her wineglass in the living room. She dies in a freakish way (suicide or murder, pick your brand of mustard). But what about her warrants the Bluebloods' adoration? Or Blue's intense fascination? If Blue is so perceptive, why can't she see that this woman is nothing more than a veiled plot device (woman murdered in woods = oooh, a whodunit)?

What we mostly get of Hannah is description, for Pessl is unable to make Hannah interesting through Hannah herself. She very rarely speaks in conversation, and when she does, it's hardly enlightening. Very early in the novel--I think it's the second time Blue meets her--Blue describes Hannah as this glowing personality whose words you just had to pay attention to, the assumption being that even if they are not particularly weighty, profound, or radiating wisdom like a nuclear reactor (ha! see, it's catching), that they are at least clever or novel enough to be worth hearing. But Hannah's side of the ensuing conversation is nothing more than the standard chit-chat Hi-how-are-yous When-did-you-moves How-do-you-like-Stocktons that any neighborly grandmother could come up with. Hannah is nothing more than a manequin that Pessl dresses up like the mysterious leading lady, but ultimately she's vapor. Synopsis: this novel is mostly fluff. At times amusing fluff, but pretty gratuitous. ...less

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Wendi rated it:

05/20/08

Read in May, 2008

recommended to Wendi by: Tina
recommends it for: Sarah, Beth

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Recommended by Tina

So far I'm finding it interesting, if not a little pompous. I think it's wonderful that the writer has such a firm grasp on vocabularly, I'm sure she aced the verbal part of the GRE. And it's kind of fun reading the descriptions of people and how she annotates them.

I like the quirkyness of the main character Blue. But I'm intimidated by her intelligence. At times I also feel slightly insulted because I'm not more like her - I'm too giggly, girly, interested in things ...more

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ruzmarì rated it:

01/22/08

bookshelves: juvenilia

Read in November, 2007

What I learned from this book? The title is the best part.

After a Tristram-Shandy-esque opening, the novel progresses wryly through the memories of its narrator, the incredibly (please take that word at its most etymological, literal level) well-read Blue, who is half a sandwich short of a full-blown child-prodigy picnic and quite proud of it. Blue has spent her childhood as a half-orphaned nomad (her mother died when she was five, and her academic father accepts only visiting faculty posi...more What I learned from this book? The title is the best part.

After a Tristram-Shandy-esque opening, the novel progresses wryly through the memories of its narrator, the incredibly (please take that word at its most etymological, literal level) well-read Blue, who is half a sandwich short of a full-blown child-prodigy picnic and quite proud of it. Blue has spent her childhood as a half-orphaned nomad (her mother died when she was five, and her academic father accepts only visiting faculty positions, and only by semester engagement), essentially reading (and sometimes memorizing) the Great Works of All Time in preparation for her ultimate career as a Harvard undergrad. Why this is the aim of her life instead of a stepping-stone on the path toward greater achievements, the reader is left to chalk up to the true juvenile tenor of the book.

If Blue's childhood and lofty objectives seem improbable, they are at least marginally plausible. After all, mothers do die, fathers do move their families around the country from one university town to another in old station wagons, and children do memorize Shakespeare. (They don't, in my admittedly limited experience, tend to memorize Stephen Hawking, but maybe I have just met the wrong children.) It's once Blue and her father "settle" - a term I feel should be used with extraordinary, dare I say unbearable, lightness in the case of this narrative - in the town where Blue will spend her senior year of high school that the novel becomes simultaneously its most vividly realistic and its most unbelievably far-fetched - and with that paradox comes the novel's real downfall.

Pessl's approach is self-consciously creative (the novel includes visual aids and its last pages are an essay test for the reader). Her descriptions of the social networks and pitfalls of high school, especially high school in a small town, are incomparable ; her attribution of intelligent conspiracy to high-school students (whose main preoccupations give them the emotional maturity of third-graders), in a measure that would shame Kenyan politicians and Halliburton alike, is somewhat harder to take in. The novel is written with energy and vivacity ; the language is alive and engaging ; but it is also really full of logical leaps and assumptions that undercut its own intelligent structure and interest. Pessl quotes liberally and smoothly, and part of the reason for that tendency might be her own desire to create characters who take on the dimensions and amplitude of Shakespearean heroes. Unfortunately, she gets caught in her own net, since ultimately these teenagers are not the tragic kings and queens she (and they) wish they were, but - well, just teenagers. Also, after 350 pages of whiny, self-congratulatory dialogue among the group of gifted adolescents comprised by Blue and her band of misfit friends, I didn't want to read any more, I wanted to push pencils through all their eyes.

I can't talk about the end of the novel without giving away Important Plot Elements, so suffice it to say that Blue makes it to Harvard, and moves away with great drama and intense self-appraisal from the gang of brilliant outcasts of her youth. Of course, she is now merely part of the largest gang of brilliant outcasts possible, and as the novel closes I think it is okay to wonder what she has actually either learned or accomplished in the book's willful picaresque. I know what I learned : high school is a narrative period best left untouched by young writers.
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Jessica rated it:

(review of isbn 0143112120)

07/20/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: anyone who wants to think about things, Nabokov fans, basically everyone in the world

Any book that's a truly good book will change your life, at least for a few days after you finish it, as you walk around still somewhat in the world the author created for you. Then you become embarassed. "For Christ's sake, it's only a book," you tell yourself.
This is a story told through books themselves, a whodunnit, a coming-of-ager, and, for me at least, at least a whiff of self-help. (I found myself a bit too recognizable in the June Bug characters). It conforms to my ide...more Any book that's a truly good book will change your life, at least for a few days after you finish it, as you walk around still somewhat in the world the author created for you. Then you become embarassed. "For Christ's sake, it's only a book," you tell yourself.
This is a story told through books themselves, a whodunnit, a coming-of-ager, and, for me at least, at least a whiff of self-help. (I found myself a bit too recognizable in the June Bug characters). It conforms to my idea that all good stories involve murder, (and I love books that conform to my ideas) but then it even references my idea, which I guess wasn't my idea at all, in the chapter named after the book "Deliverance": "All worthwhile tales posess some element of violence."
Some will find this book too gimmicky...the use of a syllabus outline, the visual aids, the fact that the first word of the book is dad and the last word is me (thus encapsulating the entire story arch), the final exam. I don't understand people who don't like gimmicks - I fall for literary magic tricks like a child who thinks his nose has been confiscated. But unlike that child, I love fallig for them. They make me feel that I am in the presence of someone who is not only a writer but something else entirely, something more like a mathematician, aeronautical engineer, or a miracle-performing priestess.
This book made me feel the way I did during a college lecture on Lolita, where the professor broke down Lolita by numbers, the numbers of the license plates, the hotel room numbers, etc. They all swirled and anagrammed their way into a ridiculous formula at the end. And so it turned out, that not only was Nabokov churning out a literary masterpiece, but a mathematical formula as well. Who knew? Certainly not 21-year-old Me. It might be gimmicky, but these sort of books are the literary equivalent of walking while chewing gum while playing the cello - the authors are strange maestros of many art forms. And so I've concluded that Nabokov is the silent, invisible uncle of "Special Topics", Pessl's patron saint, and not just because of the butterflies and the old professor/precocious girl pairing.
All in all, not bad for a 27-year old Barnard grad.
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Casey rated it:

01/18/08

bookshelves: 2008, adults

This first bit is my initial reaction to the book. I'm keeping it up because I still think it's valid. However, see bellow for my post-reading thoughts.

Oh, how I hate this book. The parenthetic statements are making me homicidal. The dad is a jackass of unparalleled proportion, and I have yet to see Hannah do ANYTHING that warrants Blue's fascination. Sure, she picks up strange men in diners, but really, who hasn't? The writing is way too fond of its own wit, and I'm sick of al...more This first bit is my initial reaction to the book. I'm keeping it up because I still think it's valid. However, see bellow for my post-reading thoughts.

Oh, how I hate this book. The parenthetic statements are making me homicidal. The dad is a jackass of unparalleled proportion, and I have yet to see Hannah do ANYTHING that warrants Blue's fascination. Sure, she picks up strange men in diners, but really, who hasn't? The writing is way too fond of its own wit, and I'm sick of all the figurative language. It's crammed in like a hermit crab in a too-small shell (that simile is my own (and purposefully poor), but not unlike the fifty million that litter every page of the book).

Now, it does have one thing going for it: plot. If someone were to tell me what the book is about without my having to read it, I'd be thrilled. Because I certainly do want to know what happens, but damn, it's a slog.

After finishing:

As you can tell from the above, I initially hated this book. I was eagerly awaiting the end so I could grant it ZERO stars. And I stand by my claims. Call me old-fashioned, but I think a sentence should have no more than one simile or metaphor. And I think that figurative language should be spread out a bit, because it gets to a point that it's annoying and distracting. Now, I acknowledge that this overcrowding might have been on purpose--the story is told in a teenager's voice--but it was annoying and distracting. The same thing goes with with the over-abundance of citations (although near the end of the book, there's a confrontation in the dad's office, and the citation bit gets pretty funny). And I know the dad is supposed to come off as an ass, but it made me impatient. Finally, the teen dialog was dismally inauthentic. Dee and Dum especially rang false. So I still have some reservations about the book (as my boyfriend will tell you, it's a bit banged-up because I threw it a few times).

So how did it go from zero stars to four? Well, it all happened around page 311. That's when the language loosened up a little, and Pessl let what she really had going for her--the plot--take over. At this point, the story takes a dramatic turn, and it almost seems to become a different book. It made a quick transformation from AWFULLY LAME to a pretty cool action/mystery piece. I will say that I felt like this was an abrupt change that though (again) may have been on purpose, was a little awkward. But damn, who cares? From that point on, I couldn't put the book down, I kept turning back to clues in earlier pages, I accidentally let my 7th period silent reading go on ten minutes too long. Just like Blue realized she'd been duped, I saw that what I thought was a completely shitty book was, in actuality, quite fantastic.

I have some problems with the last chapter--it was a little self-indulgent, I thought--but it's a small complaint.

I hope that people who are hating this give it a chance.

Well played, Marisha Pessl, well played. You got me....less

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El rated it:

09/22/07

bookshelves: 21st-centurylit

Read in September, 2007

Blue van Meer is a smart high school student on her way to Harvard who has spent most of her life alone with her father after a tragic accident took her mother's life early in Blue's childhood. Her father, a professor of political science, moves across the country to teach at small colleges for short periods of time, allowing Blue the opportunity to grow up as somewhat of a vagabond. By the time they reach the destination of which the book is about, Blue is unlike most kids her age. Her life ...more Blue van Meer is a smart high school student on her way to Harvard who has spent most of her life alone with her father after a tragic accident took her mother's life early in Blue's childhood. Her father, a professor of political science, moves across the country to teach at small colleges for short periods of time, allowing Blue the opportunity to grow up as somewhat of a vagabond. By the time they reach the destination of which the book is about, Blue is unlike most kids her age. Her life has been spent in one town after another with only her father and his lectures as the remaining constant. She seems wise beyond her years having read a variety of different books likely found boring by her contemporaries - or the contemporaries of her father, for that matter.

The book is Blue's somewhat lengthy memory of the year that "changed her life", the introduction to a teacher who "made a difference" and a small group of tight-knit friends who were aloof, exclusive and downright snotty. This is acceptance (or something vaguely resembling acceptance by a girl who had never known such a thing in her life) is what ultimately makes the girl fall and break into a million little pieces. There is an underlying mystery that appears on page one, rears its head throughout the 500+ pages and sort of comes to a wrap near the end.

I am equally fascinated by and disgusted with young up-and-coming writers who appear out of the blue with this huge novel that sits on bestseller lists for months or years, with claims that it is "fresh" and "original" and "groundbreaking". This book is not quite any of the above; rather it pays homage (most likely unconsciously) to previous books like Donna Tartt's The Secret History or (god-save-you Marisha Pessl) The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Young Pessl constructs each chapter around the title of a classic work (ie, Moby Dick - a chapter in which a large man drowns in a pool; The Woman in White - in which Blue and her father are first confronted by the "fabulous" Hannah Schneider, the teacher that changes Blue's life for better or worse, etc. - a technique that sort of lends itself to be somewhat interesting) and the pages are filled with references and footnotes and rather pretentious ramblings.

The writing itself is not horrible, but smells of creative writing workshops (very unlikely the Iowa Writer's Workshop). The story was unbelievable in a setting that tried to feel like it could be believable, with characters the writer perhaps knew - but most likely characters the writer wished she had known. Sadly.

I wanted to like it. I tried hard to like it. I thought about it long after in order to force myself to like it. While it will stick in my head for a long time, it is most comparable to a Backstreet Boys song that won't leave my mind. And I blame James Joyce for it, and Dave Eggers for making it seem like Joyce was qualified....less

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Summer rated it:

01/21/08

bookshelves: 2008, novels

Donna Tartt wrote a splendid book called The Secret History which both celebrated and skewered hyper-intellectualism as well as explored the process of interacting with a text and the pleasures of narrative devices. This book follows roughly the same storyline (and, incidentally, the storyline of Daniel Handler's The Basic Eight, down to the "study questions" at the end), except there's absolutely no reason for the precious chapter titles and the annotated references - th...more

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Doug rated it:

01/26/08

Read in February, 2007

I've read other reviews and I believe the negative reviews have been written by people who didn't take time to really read the book and follow it all the way through. It would be easy to do. It's not a book you can speed read. (See Ulysses by James Joyce) Sometimes I'll tear through a good book in a couple of days. But there is so much in this book that you have to take your time to really comprehend it and get the good stuff out of it. Marisha's writing technique is totally unique with her hund...more I've read other reviews and I believe the negative reviews have been written by people who didn't take time to really read the book and follow it all the way through. It would be easy to do. It's not a book you can speed read. (See Ulysses by James Joyce) Sometimes I'll tear through a good book in a couple of days. But there is so much in this book that you have to take your time to really comprehend it and get the good stuff out of it. Marisha's writing technique is totally unique with her hundreds of references to great works of fiction, movie stars, reference books, and other explanations of behavior. I laughed and enjoyed perhaps 60 percent of these and whipped through some of them, not quite following but knowing they'd be worth studying if I were retired and had more time.

Basically, this is a coming of age story. The main character, Blue, has been raised by an intellectual professor who is always on the move dragging her around the country to different jobs with different universities. Her mother died when she was very young, so her only deep relatinship is with her father. And it is a very touching and loving relationship. She becomes his "Mini Me" in many ways. They land for her senior year in a very high end private school and as she is maturing and pulled into a group of "cool" kids by a very interesting and eccentric female teacher, her life starts to change as she tries to become a "cool" teenager, to date and party, to become more than a smart but nerdy professor's perfect little daughter.

As all of this happens, she starts to realize that her father has a few flaws, has been having flings with women and treating them poorly, that he has lied about some of his meetings with other professors and that there may be some kind of secret second life going on.

There is murder, disappearances, first sexual experiences, shyness, embarassing moments of being young and tongue-tied in front of a class, but more than anything, there is the touching love of a young girl for her father, and then how she deals with some unexpected, heart wrenching blows to her life.

Throughout the book, there were dozens and dozens of laugh out loud moments excellent insights into relationships and the little things that make us tick. And even though much of the book was somewhat tongue in cheek, the main themes came through to me loud and clear and when I finally finished up after re-reading the introduction (a must unless you have a photographic memory) I put the book down, sad that I was finished and hoping that there will be some kind of follow up....less

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Susan rated it:

12/07/07

bookshelves: fiction-adult

Read in December, 2007

This may be the best book I've read all year, which isn't to say it's perfect. In fact, there are about a million reasons to hate it that most of my fellow reviewers have already touched upon: the gorgeous young It Girl-looking author for one, or the denseness of the writing (some have called it overwritten), the pretentiousness of it all. And yet, for sheer impact, I don't think I could come up with a single thing to top it. This book really gets in your head and doesn't leave it the same again...more This may be the best book I've read all year, which isn't to say it's perfect. In fact, there are about a million reasons to hate it that most of my fellow reviewers have already touched upon: the gorgeous young It Girl-looking author for one, or the denseness of the writing (some have called it overwritten), the pretentiousness of it all. And yet, for sheer impact, I don't think I could come up with a single thing to top it. This book really gets in your head and doesn't leave it the same again. I almost returned it a chapter or two in because quite honestly, the book is about the size of your standard dictionary and it was madness to begin something like this going into final exams. I couldn't bring myself to postpone reading the rest though, because the dry, wryness of the humor really got to me and it was too good to set aside. Ultimately, I polished off the last quarter or so of the book in a single night because I was gripped by the suspense and unable to put it down until I found out how things resolved themselves.

There is something just too compelling about the main character. Blue is a near-genius who may excel in nearly everything but her social development remains pretty severely stunted because of being dragged around the country by her hilariously pretentious and snarky professor father and his sway over basically every aspect of her life. Newly arrived at the last in a string of schools so she can finish out her senior year, the hapless Blue gets sucked into a coterie of intense over-achievers who all orbit around an an even more mysterious drama teacher. While her association with them gives Blue the opportunity to finally act like a teenager for the first time in her life, there are disturbing undercover goings-on that begin to be unraveled that make her (and the reader) question everyone's agendas and motives, including her father, who seems somehow connected to it all.

Although the fact that the book is looking back on the events surrounding a dramatic event that is revealed to us early on, more and more half-truths and deceptions are unraveled as the book progresses that lead to even bigger bombshells. Just as you don't want to like the book and yet you do, Blue is exasperating and heartbreaking at the same time, the book is darkly funny and absolutely terrifying. I know a lot is always said about Infinite Jest---which seemed to me too clever by half---but this at least has a payoff that's worth the effort....less

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Angerball rated it:

(review of isbn 0141024321)

01/13/08

bookshelves: 2008, borrowed

Read in January, 2008

Right from the introduction of the book, we know we are facing a mystery. In the initial pages, we learn that the protagonist’s teacher, Hannah, has been found dead, “hanging by a piece of electrical cord”.

The book is written through the eyes of Blue van Meer, a ‘bleak’ (as described by a minor character), precocious 16 year old girl. She has spent a great majority of her life, travelling the country with her father, a political science professor (and habitual womaniser – woman c...more