Another Fantastic Character

Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
Originally published in hardcover in 2006 - Viking

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To me a good book can be a book that simply tries too hard. This is such a book. What I mean is that the author generously entrusts the reader with everything she has, lays it all out on the table. Or perhaps what I'm trying to say is that Pessl reaches way beyond expectations and yet you cannot help but bask in the brilliance as the aforementioned endeavor blazes past you. 

Blue van Meer is the brilliance. She is a mix of Oscar Wao (or really Diaz) and Juno (Yes, the movie. And I apologize for the reference, it's almost as reprehensible as a Potter allusion.) I am still in awe of her. 

I must admit though that at times my mind wandered - mostly during the usual sag in the middle of a novel - and I began a feeble attempt to pick apart the book. The thought entered my mind how Pessl came up with the book idea and how she fleshed it out so magnificently: in college, using absolutely all of her class notes as the meat for Blue's character (and her father's character too). Blue makes an inordinate amount of references and I couldn't help but think that these were highlights from a professor's speech or a research paper.

The plot itself though is where the book overextends itself - much too contrived and frankly quite cumbersome. Were I writing the book this is what I would greatly restructure - but alas I am not the bestselling author and Pessl is. (Man alive, is she really as good looking as her dustjacket photo?)


Amazon 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. 


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.