false 3483 067003777X 9780670037773 7998 1907 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1163789565m/3483.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3483.Special_Topics_in_Calamity_Physics 2362 Marisha Pessl 9765 2384 2 9 false Mon Sep 03 14:24:45 -0700 2007 Thu Dec 17 08:37:24 -0800 2009
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. ]]>