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Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Marisha Pessl (Goodreads Author)

3.70 · Rating details · 43,846 ratings · 5,339 reviews

Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics is an unforgettable debut novel that combines the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt and the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock: a darkly hilarious coming-of-age tale and a richly plotted suspense story, told with dazzling intelligence and wit.

'I wrote this account one year after I'd found Hannah Dead.

I thought I'd managed to era Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics is an unforgettable debut novel that combines the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt and the suspense of Alfred Hitchcock: a darkly hilarious coming-of-age tale and a richly plotted suspense story, told with dazzling intelligence and wit.

'I wrote this account one year after I'd found Hannah Dead.

I thought I'd managed to erase all traces of that night within myself.

But I was wrong.

Every night when I tried to sleep, I'd close my eyes and see her again, exactly as I found her, hanging from a pine tree by an orange electrical cord, her neck twisted like a tulip stem, her eyes seeing nothing.

Or else that was the problem. They'd seen everything.'

Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a mesmerizing debut. As teenager Blue van Meer tells her story we are hurled into a dizzying world of murder and butterflies, womanizing and wandering, American McCulture, The Western Canon, political radicalism and juvenile crushisms. Structured around a syllabus for a Great Works of Literature class (with hand-drawn Visual Aids), Blue's wickedly funny yet poignant tale reveals how the imagination finds meaning in the most bewildering times, the ways people of all ages strive for connection, and how the darkest of secrets can set us free.

'Beneath the foam of this exuberant debut is a dark, strong drink' Jonathan Franzen, author of, The Corrections

'Any [Donna] Tartt fan disappointed that her second novel had little in common with her debut should rush out and buy this book immediately... It's a brilliant debut, guaranteed to join the ranks of The Secret History and The Virgin Suicides as one of those rare books to become a cult hit and instant classic' Sunday Telegraph

'One of the most impressive debut novels I have ever read ... It stops you doing anything apart from reading it ' Independent on Sunday

'Special Topics in Calamity Physics made me stay up all night reading; in the morning it seemed like one of those parties where everyone is too cool for you but you desperately want to know them anyway . . . I loved this book' Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife

Marisha Pessl was born in 1977 and lives in New York. This is her first novel. ...more

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Paperback, 514 pages

Published May 3rd 2007 by Penguin (first published August 3rd 2006)

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Aug 28, 2007 Patrick rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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 beginning, but by the end I was like, “Blaahahhgajh. End, end, ...more

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Oct 04, 2007 Sarah rated it liked it · review of another edition

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 shi 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.
...more

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Apr 03, 2007 Summer rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, 2008

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 - they have no bearing on th ...more

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Jan 26, 2008 Doug Bradshaw rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 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. ...more

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Mar 19, 2008 James rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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 purposes, the book does ...more

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Jan 03, 2017 Maxwell marked it as dnf · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

I tried with this book. I gave it 150 pages, and at this moment in time I just can't get into it. The constant literary allusions and pop culture references, mixed with the didactic and wordy writing style kept pushing me out of the story. I'd skim whole paragraphs just to find the important, plot-moving parts of the sentences. I held out hope for this one because I chose it for book club (sorry, friends!) and it's been on my shelf for 2+ years, so I felt like I had to conquer it. But it's only ...more

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Jul 15, 2007 Jessica added it · review of another edition

This is a story told through books themselves, a whodunnit, a coming-of-ager. 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. But 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 sw ...more

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Aug 22, 2007 Oriana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: zeitgeist-y, read-2007, too-smart-for-their-own-good

Let me start by saying that I did like this book. I did. Ms. Pessl is probably too smart for her own good, but that's never stopped me before.

That said, as with most over-intelectualized writings, I had trouble getting close to her, to her work. There's such a lot of time spent obfuscating, demonstrating how clever she is, developing stacked metaphors and allusions, that the story is difficult to get lost in. You are constantly reminded that you are reading a novel by a very smart young lady. A ...more

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Jul 19, 2008 Erica rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: No one. Ever.

Shelves: fiction

What have I learned? I've learned that apparently it's possible for a large number of fawning reviewers to confuse "pretentious" with "intelligent". I very likely got what I deserved when I chose to ignore a clear warning, namely the so called "Glossary of Terms" inside the dustjacket which introduced our 16 year old heroine, Blue van Meer, as "a brainy, deadpan, preternaturally erudite girl who...has a head crammed full of literary, scientific, and philosophical knowledge." Admittedly, I was ta ...more

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Oct 28, 2018 monica kim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-loved

This is a unique book in that you really won’t understand the point of anything until you finish.

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Jun 05, 2007 Emily rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I was about one-quarter of the way through this book when I had a strange revelation. It was, basically, kind of formulaic. And yet, the formula was rare and unpredictable. See, several years ago, I read Donna Tartt's The Secret History, a dark book about a group of preciously sophisticated, murderous wacked-out Classics majors at a small liberal arts college. I was captivated. Six months ago I read Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket's) The Basic Eight, about a group of precociously sophisticate I was about one-quarter of the way through this book when I had a strange revelation. It was, basically, kind of formulaic. And yet, the formula was rare and unpredictable. See, several years ago, I read Donna Tartt's The Secret History, a dark book about a group of preciously sophisticated, murderous wacked-out Classics majors at a small liberal arts college. I was captivated. Six months ago I read Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket's) The Basic Eight, about a group of precociously sophisticated, murderous high school students at a San Franscisco high school. I was, again, captivated. And then I read Special Topics In Calamity Physics, about a preciously sophisticated group of prep school kids that get involved in...is it a murder? A suicide? And I thought, is this some sort of new trend in fiction? The secret, murderous high school club? If it is the new trend, I understand why, I suppose. High School can murder anyone's soul, and it's tightly knit cliques that tend to do the most murdering. (I know the Secret History took place at a college. but it was about Classics majors, and they are just plain weird.)
As a literature junkie, I also think I understand why these characters are always precociously smart- because former English majors and literature geeks dream them up, and it's such fun to dream up a character that lets you quote Joyce and Shakespeare nonstop.
So, maybe I couldn't help but take this book with a grain of salt, and maybe the main character seemed just a bit too grown up for her years. But here's the thing- I couldn't stop reading the book. Like, I was obsessively carrying it around, and during the climactic sequence, I just sat there on the bus and didn't even notice I was late to work. So it's got formulaic elements, but the solution to the mystery bears no resemblance to either Daniel Handler or Donna Tartt. And so heroine Blue seems a bit too wise for her years...so does Harry Potter, after all. I'd pick this one up if you like intrigue and don't mind a bit of academia along the way. (Yes, there are references to Joyce and Shakespeare along the way). ...more

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Nov 26, 2007 Casey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adults, 2008

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 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. ...more

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Jun 27, 2007 Jason Pettus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

(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 litera (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... ...more

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Jun 04, 2008 Nick Black rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: eight year old girls

Shelves: pseudointellectual-jibberjabber, just-fucking-terrible

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

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Sep 24, 2013 Fabian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If the whimsy of "Bonjour Tristesse" met & mated with all that malignant student magic from "The Secret History" this would be their child. This Gen-Nexter novel holds the pulse of the zeitgeist under its overachieving, overintelligent finger and lets it be known: this is the novel for our generation, for the eager me!me!&onlyme!s. The heroine is such a brat, the reader oftens remembers past characters like these: uberegotist humanoids--selfish to the extreme, & SMILES--here is their side of the ...more

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Jun 08, 2018 Dan Schwent marked it as to-read · review of another edition

This one is going back on the pile. I made it over 100 pages this time. That's something, right?

My problems with this book are the glacial pace and overwritten sentences. It's like an even more wordy Donna Tartt book. I don't need literary references cited in every paragraph and overblown dialogue and flowery language for the sake of flowery language don't impress me at this stage in the game. The pretentious, pompous tone of the book is also a turn-off. Picking up the book to read it began feel ...more

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Nov 10, 2016 Edward Lorn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Fans of literary fiction.

Let's get my one and only complaint about the book out of the way.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics is hard to get into. I started it numerous times it, but it kept losing my attention. Then my good friend Thomas Stromquist mentioned it was on his TBR, so we gave it the old buddy-read try and I finally got past the first 50 pages. It wasn't until Blue met Hannah that the story grabbed me. That is not to say that the opening pages are unneeded. The exact opposite is true. Everything here comes ...more

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Jan 10, 2016 Elizabeth rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I could easily attend a semester-long seminar about this book. Holy "coming of age with murder, suicide, conspiracy theories, and turns you don't see coming because you aren't worthy to walk in the same light as Marisha Pessl" shit, this book was great. Better than Night Film. Bravo. ...more

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Nov 21, 2020 Tom Quinn rated it liked it · review of another edition

A Frankenstein's monster of fast and furious factoids. A homemade goulash of parlor romance, teen coming of age, and Agatha Christie. Think Jeopardy! meets Degrassi High. Think Gilmore Girls meets Trivial Pursuit. Think some other low culture thing meets some sort of high culture thing, but whatever you're thinking, think fast.

Our narrator is a girl named Blue, and if you want to assign some symbolic meaning to that, go ahead - consider it the Lit Crit equivalent of a BINGO free space. She has a ...more

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Mar 18, 2018 Andrew Smith rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: not-finished

I only got about 20% of the way through this one. But do keep in mind that it’s a big book: over 500 pages or 21 hours of listening. I don’t like giving up on books and I’d really enjoyed her 2014 novel Night Film so I did try to stay with it. The problem is that though there’s a relatively enticing story here the telling is just so protracted, so tiresome that I lost the will.

It kicks off by introducing 24-year-old Blue van Meer who’d lost her mother early (car accident) and is now touring Am ...more

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Sep 03, 2007 Tori rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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 s 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. ...more

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May 06, 2007 Anne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 country wit 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. ...more

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May 28, 2013 Caroline rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: she-wrote-it, academia, took-way-too-long-to-read, literary-fiction, mystery

***NO SPOILERS***

What Special Topics in Calamity Physics is: a book about a sixteen-year-old girl and her dad living in a new town. What it isn’t: a book about physics. What it is: a book about a sixteen-year-old girl, her five uber-cool new friends, and one doting teacher. What it isn’t: all that it appears to be. Really, the story is indefinable. At its heart it’s a murder mystery, but to say that is also rudely dismissive--of its thoughtfulness, its quirkiness, its complexity. Special Topics ...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, coming-of-age, north-carolina, books-about-books, mystery

Brilliant rendition of an unforgettable brainy teen who feels compelled to leave her world of books to solve the mystery of a teacher’s death. Many will find the book too long with not enough meaningful human action, but I found the world of the lead character’s mind grew on me as a doomed, but attractive, refuge from the narcissistic void facing many youth today.

Sixteen year old Blue van Meer moves to a small town in North Carolina with her political science professor dad and recounts her seni Brilliant rendition of an unforgettable brainy teen who feels compelled to leave her world of books to solve the mystery of a teacher’s death. Many will find the book too long with not enough meaningful human action, but I found the world of the lead character’s mind grew on me as a doomed, but attractive, refuge from the narcissistic void facing many youth today.

Sixteen year old Blue van Meer moves to a small town in North Carolina with her political science professor dad and recounts her senior year at an exclusive private school, St. Galway. She takes up with a disaffected clique of privileged kids which regularly gathers at the home of art teacher Hannah. We are told from the beginning that Hannah dies a mysterious death and that the impact of her death is linked in Blue’s mind with making sense of her own mother’s death when she was an infant. As Blue’s father moves nearly yearly from college to college, she grows up never experiencing any long lasting friendships or community ties and, consequently, comes to adopt her father’s mode of relying more on the lessons and ideas from books than the real world.
This approach to life as one big lesson plan is a fascinating place to dwell for awhile as a reader. Blue’s witty recourse to the insights from novels, philosophies, biographies, music lyrics, and movies is fun and fresh at the beginning. This wears thin and begins to irritate after 100 pages or so. Having books chapters named after famous books begins to seem absurd and pretentious. If you are like me, it soon dawns on you how fatally flawed and sterile Blue’s mode of existence is. She really can’t connect emotionally to anyone, and you almost wonder if she isn’t missing something in having no serious challenges from the usual teen obsessions with drugs, sex, and rock and roll. I almost felt like cheering when she cries for the first time over a vicious public comment made by a boy she likes.

Luckily for the reader, Blue eventually gets engaged in doing something in the real world through pursuing the mystery of Hannah’s death. In the process, she learns that neither Hannah or her father were what they seemed, and she begins to emerge from her chrysalis. This character is going to loom in my mind for a long time as some kind of parable. At the moment, I translate it as being like a dweller in Plato’s cave who tries to make sense of reality not with his own senses, but by recourse to a vast library, a strategy fated to have limited success.
...more

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Apr 07, 2014 Stephen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I liked this book a lot. Ms. Pessl has a very unique voice. I suspect she is much like the central character Blue, erudite and very well read. Based on this novel and her second Night Film, I think she would be a fascinating dinner companion. Her writing style is however not for everyone. Throughout Topics Blue expresses herself using footnoted metaphors referencing obscure texts. I found this style to be interesting, entertaining and a good fit for Blue's character, but over time it does wear, I liked this book a lot. Ms. Pessl has a very unique voice. I suspect she is much like the central character Blue, erudite and very well read. Based on this novel and her second Night Film, I think she would be a fascinating dinner companion. Her writing style is however not for everyone. Throughout Topics Blue expresses herself using footnoted metaphors referencing obscure texts. I found this style to be interesting, entertaining and a good fit for Blue's character, but over time it does wear, suggesting an author trying too hard to show off her cleverness.

The first two-thirds of Topics reads as a coming of age story of self discovery as the intellectual and aloof Blue is drawn to the cipher of teacher Hannah Schneider and injected into the high school clique of the Bluebloods. Had Topics held to this story line, developed the Bluebloods and revealed a less imaginative back story for Hannah Schneider I think it would have been a better novel. The latter third devolves into a very contrived and rather silly murder mystery. A poor choice. A smart author like Ms. Pessl should have known and adhered to Occam's Razor: The simplest solution is usually best.

It is interesting to contrast this book with Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Tana French's The Likeness. Both feature an intelligent outsider brought into a clique-ish group of friends with unclear histories and hidden agendas. The main characters in The Secret History and The Likeness like Blue in Topics learn about themselves by uncovering these mysteries. Tartt's novel is like Pessl's very literary. French's is more a straight up mystery. Both are I believe more successful because Tartt and French fully develop all their characters. Pessl develops a compelling Blue but leaves many of her other characters including the key Bluebloods as sketches. Their contribution to Blue's development and the story as a whole is thus less clear.

On my buy, borrow it, skip it scale, Topics is a buy for Ms. Pessl's obvious talent and unique voice. Worth reading again despite the flaws. ...more

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Sep 27, 2007 Shannon (Giraffe Days) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2007, not-worth-it, fiction, mystery-suspense

This was a weird case of having high expectations and having no expectations, and being disappointed in one and reasonably well satisfied in the other. Overall, though, I didn't like it, and found it to be pretty obnoxious.

The best way to introduce this one is to use the blurb off the back:

Calamity Physics: The resulting explosion of energy, light, heartbreak and wonder as Blue van Meer enters a small, elite school in a sleepy mountain town. Blue's highly unusual past draws her to a charismati

...more

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Jan 28, 2012 David Katzman rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Fans of Gossip Girl and MENSA club meetings

Special Topics in Mixed Feelings. Report from the Gifted & Talented program: there was much brilliance on display in the novel in question. My report from detention: some qualities of it irritated the hell out of me and one glaring structural element weakened it.

The premise: A genius high schooler is being dragged by her widowed, genius college-professor father from small college town to small college town and transferring from school to school. Said genius high schooler (one Blue van Meer) land Special Topics in Mixed Feelings. Report from the Gifted & Talented program: there was much brilliance on display in the novel in question. My report from detention: some qualities of it irritated the hell out of me and one glaring structural element weakened it.

The premise: A genius high schooler is being dragged by her widowed, genius college-professor father from small college town to small college town and transferring from school to school. Said genius high schooler (one Blue van Meer) lands her senior year--with likely prospects of Harvard--in an elite private high school where she is drawn into the spoiled richie-rich cream-of-the-crop clique of the school. Oddly, the clique is guided (mentored) by a woman they worship, a beautiful young teacher who shouldn't be partying with her students but does.

It's rather like Gossip Girl at a MENSA meeting. Or Oscar Wilde in Mean Girls.

Many of the characters are quite cruel (and witty in their cruelty), and although Blue is the wallflower of the group, she is just as clever if not more so (although only in her thoughts) and just as cruel. I felt sympathy for her initially because she was so reserved compared to the others and much less spoiled. However, at a certain point, I started to feel she was just as heartless and judgmental as the rest, and the wit began to wear a bit thin. Much of the book is not very generous in spirit, if you will. Pessl has a sharp eye for human attributes that should be mocked. Admittedly there is a turning point at the very end wherein Blue reveals a bit more generosity of spirit, but it doesn't make up for the extended exhaustion. Even the dumb high schoolers seem to be masters of pointed viciousness, which rings rather false. Not every teenager can be as clever as the scriptwriters for Heathers. I found Blue's father, the professor, particularly grating. He was, I suppose, like the ultimate arrogant intellectual who always insists on his rightness and looks down on almost all others. He was an intellectual bully (an Alpha Dog of the Intelligentsia) who insists on his rightness and mocks any who disagree. It would appear his daughter inherited quite a bit of that attitude. Many of his spoken pronouncements felt like they had been written down in an essay rather than naturalistically spoken. At many points, I felt characters said things that were so cleverly stated that they were unnatural and artificial. I wasn't reading about a real "character" I was reading the cleverness of the writing (the author's cleverness). And for the most part, she gets away with it because it is damn smart. But after a while the witty cruelty started to get irritating. I became a little bored with it because although it maintained a fairly consistent high level of cleverness...it maintained a fairly consistent high level of cleverness. It was like listening to my favorite comedian...for 10 hours. Yes, he's damn funny. But after a while, his style isn't surprising any more and his jokes get repetitive. At times, the style was too mannered, almost precious.

I started the book truly enamored by the intelligence and humor on display but by the halfway point, I started to feel...shouldn't this be ending soon? The book was about 1/2 too long. And there is a reason for that as well: the book is really bifurcated into two stories. It begins as a comedy of teen manners, but then it unexpectedly morphs into a mystery-suspense novel. I won't spoil the turn of events, but I must point out that really it was like two different books knotted together in the middle, and this turn bothered me. The "mystery" situation is quite clever as well, and I was drawn rushing toward the conclusion to discover the solution. But what started as a character study transformed in the second half to something signicantly plot driven. I wanted to know the solution to the mystery ... just to know it. Not because I was concerned about the characters involved. It was in pursuit of answers to the clues.

The mystery half of the book is exceedingly convoluted. And I fear if you pull at it too much, some strings come unravelled. A few big holes for me were [THESE ARE FAIRLY MAJOR SO DON'T READ IF YOU WANT TO READ THIS BOOK.] (view spoiler) I did enjoy the mystery piece of the book to some extent, but at the same time it kept nagging at me that I was suddenly reading a different book. I had lost interest in the characters.

I'd note too that the book includes sketches of characters from the book by the author positioned as if the narrator had drawn them. The sketches didn't really add anything to the narrative overall, and as such contributed to my feeling that they demonstrated cleverness for cleverness sake. I suppose their purpose is to make the book have more of a "textbook" feeling to it, with "visual aids." However, as they were far too sparse to really live up to that purpose, they instead seemed arbitrary. And as the novel shifted into mystery mode, the drawings became less frequent. A similar element of the book that seemed to me to be shoe-horned was titling each chapter with the name of a work of classic literature. It reminded me of an author who mentioned Proust repeatedly to add credibility to his own writing. In this case, I could only find very surface level reasons why each of the titles was associated with the book in question. For example, a chapter entitled Moby-Dick related to a single-minded pursuit. The relationship between the work of classic literature (as best as I could determine because I had only read about 1/4 of them), and the given chapter seemed so surface level that it ended up having the effect of name-dropping rather than providing any profound critical intertextuality.

This is the kind of book I'd recommend to a friend just for the sheer wit, but it's like recommending a new brand of fruit-flavored vodka. Tastes great at first, then becomes too overbearingly sweet or fruity, and eventually leaves you with a headache. ...more

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Aug 31, 2007 Blair rated it liked it

Shelves: secret-history-esque, first-novels, mystery-thriller-etc, 2000s-release

My initial interest in this book was mainly down to the fact that I had read numerous reviews comparing it to Donna Tartt's The Secret History, one of my favourite novels of all time. Having finished it, I can now say with confidence that these comparisons are fairly inaccurate and really quite lazy. The obvious similarity between the books is that both concern an elite group of young people in an academic setting (in this case, a much-admired clique known as the 'Bluebloods' in an American high My initial interest in this book was mainly down to the fact that I had read numerous reviews comparing it to Donna Tartt's The Secret History, one of my favourite novels of all time. Having finished it, I can now say with confidence that these comparisons are fairly inaccurate and really quite lazy. The obvious similarity between the books is that both concern an elite group of young people in an academic setting (in this case, a much-admired clique known as the 'Bluebloods' in an American high school) whose friendships are torn apart by an unexpected death. Otherwise, they are entirely different; Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a very odd book - in fact, it's one of the strangest I have ever read.

At first, I felt sure I was going to dislike the novel. For a start, there's the narrative voice; Blue van Meer is an extremely precocious sixteen-year-old girl who narrates the story using constant references, comparing everything to something else (the book would probably be about a third of its actual length if Blue's incessant metaphors and similies were removed). The style is exhausting, and the continual attempts to cram as many references as possible into each sentence quickly become irritating. Blue's narration is smug and self-satisfied, and it's hard to reconcile this with the fact that the character is apparently a 'wallflower' with little confidence and no real friends other than her fiercely academic father. The characterisation is also, if not exactly bad, then strange - it's difficult to believe that the Bluebloods would actually be friends with each other (or that they would command the respect and awe they mysteriously seem to enjoy from their peers), let alone accept Blue into their clique, however reluctantly. They aren't remotely believable; they come across as a crudely drawn gallery of grotesques, none of whom you can envisage as real people. In fact, none of the characters are at all likeable - including Hannah, the supposedly charismatic teacher at the centre of the Bluebloods' friendship - although this is perhaps intentional.

However, despite its imperfections, the book did draw me in. For all that it irritated me, I never once thought about not finishing it, and around halfway through (once all the largely unnecessary exposition was out of the way) I found myself hooked. I was genuinely intrigued by the mystery surrounding Hannah's identity, which deepens in the final third, and I found the eventual denouement thrilling, with the way the tale unravelled coming as a genuine surprise. Incredibly (given the length of the novel), when I reached the final page, I actually found myself wishing there was more.

There are touches of brilliance in this book, but it's deeply flawed. On one hand, it's impressive that Pessl completed such a lengthy, complex debut at a relatively young age (27); on the other, her immaturity as a writer is evident in its faults. Her skill, wit and intelligence shine through sporadically, only to be obscured by unnecessary detail or missed opportunities - we really don't need to know the exact minutiae of every tiny thing that happens to Blue, and yet the chapters explaining her conclusions about Hannah's death and the conspiracy surrounding it could have benefited from more detail. Special Topics left me feeling that Pessl is a hugely talented writer, but one still finding her feet, and yet to produce her magnum opus. It's worth reading (if you're a persistent reader, that is), but expect an impressive yet imperfect piece of work, not an absolute masterpiece. In any case, it's certainly left me feeling curious about what the author will do next. ...more

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Dec 06, 2007 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-adult

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 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 the book is about the size of your standard dictionary and it was madness to begin it going into final exams. I couldn't bring myself to postpone reading the rest though, because it was just too good to set aside. Ultimately, I polished off the last quarter or so of the book in a single night too gripped by the suspense 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 severely stunted due to being dragged cross-country by her hilariously pretentious and snarky professor father. Newly arrived at the last in a string of schools to finish out her senior year, the hapless Blue gets sucked into a coterie of intense over-achievers who orbit around an even more mysterious drama teacher. While her association with them gives Blue the chance to finally act like a teenager for the first time in her life, there are disturbing undercover goings-on that are unraveled that make her (and the reader) question everyone's agendas and motives, including her father's, who seems somehow connected to it all.

Although the book looks back on the events surrounding a dramatic incident revealed to us early on, more and more half-truths and deceptions unfold 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. ...more

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Sep 10, 2007 Rory rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: apparently, anyone who isn't me

Shelves: gave-up-on

i didn't really read this. i read about 30 pages before announcing (to the book's cover), "I HATE YOU, BOOK. SHUT UP!" anyone who wants more details as to why i despise the book that everyone else is raving about might need to buy me a drink first. ...more

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so who did it?	40	1334	Mar 07, 2020 07:16AM
What's the Name o...: SOLVED. Fiction - student murder/death - includes bibliography in its format. [s]	4	34	Dec 16, 2018 04:06AM
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What's the Name o...: SOLVED. YA about a high school girl named Blue going to a new school for senior year. [s]	5	60	May 20, 2018 10:13AM

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About Marisha Pessl

Marisha Pessl

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Marisha Pessl grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and now lives in New York City. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, her debut novel, was a bestseller in both hardcover and paperback. It won the 2006 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize (now the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize), and was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. Her ...more

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In the mind-twisting mystery Night Film, a dogged investigative reporter pursues a reclusive horror director, whose life and all-too-real films are...

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“Always live your life with your biography in mind.” — 140 likes

“But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better.” — 94 likes

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