false 3483 067003777X 9780670037773 7958 1900 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1163789565m/3483.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3483.Special_Topics_in_Calamity_Physics 2362 Marisha Pessl 9724 2378 1 23 false Tue Apr 03 09:26:21 -0700 2007 Mon Jan 21 10:30:40 -0800 2008 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 - they have no bearing on the story itself and the general effect is talking with someone who's read a lot of books and hasn't understood a damn one of them.

The irritating dialogue is more reminiscent of chick lit than of anything spoken in real life or in the realm of drama, and the narrator is utterly divorced from the grand intellectual she is supposed to be (again: see The Secret History for an excellent depiction of young scholars). No one has any sort of believable emotional reaction to anything, because no one has any discernable personality traits. Charles, Camilla, and Frances wander over from Tartt's novel to halfheartedly play roles as Charles, Leulah (really!) and Nigel, and then get bored and leave after the story inexplicably becomes a murder mystery. The only possible killer is so obviously telegraphed from early on that all of Blue's supermarket-paperback-mystery "sleuthing" is enragingly tiresome. Also, there's some sort of limp romantic subplot that I guess we're supposed to care about.

So where The Secret History is a brilliant story of the delights and dangers of text and narrative and a wrenching depiction of a classical sort of madnesss, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is the same book shat out and frosted with irritatingly perky metaphors and the worst dialogue I've seen outside of a Harlequin pulper. If you want to read this book and aren't a fan of Donna Tartt, just read The Basic Eight, which is shorter and more entertaining.]]>