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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:Special Topics in Calamity Physicsby Marisha Pessl
Powells.com Staff PickSuspenseful, dark, and extremely funny, Marisha Pessl's debut novel is an impressive feat indeed. Blue van Meer is one of the most intelligent and awkward teenage protagonists in recent years, and her story — which manages to be both a murder mystery and a coming-of-age exploration — is intensely literary (and packed with allusions), as well as emotionally honest and genuinely moving. Special Topics in Calamity Physics is diabolically clever, and a challenging and rewarding read.
What begins as an innocent (if quirky) adolescent tale swiftly transforms into an absorbing high school whodunit. If I had to compare it to a few recent films, it manages to come across both as gritty as Brick and as refreshing as Juno, but with a healthy amount of vintage Gothic inspiration threading its way through the story as well. That tightrope walk of pathos and preciousness has never been navigated so confidently.
Review-a-Day (What is Review-a-Day?)"Chutzpah, Marisha Pessl has — and in abundance. [A] thoroughly impressive debut....Fans of Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and those who enjoyed the footnotes in Susannah Clarke's fabulous Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as much as the plot, head for the bookstore with all speed. If you prefer a more Shaker-like type of storytelling, devoid of verbal curlicues and ironic flourishes, you might want to drop out of this particular class." Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire CSM review) Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments: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. Review:"Pessl's stunning debut is an elaborate construction modeled after the syllabus of a college literature course — 36 chapters are named after everything from Othello to Paradise Lost to The Big Sleep — that culminates with a final exam. It comes as no surprise, then, that teen narrator Blue Van Meer, the daughter of an itinerant academic, has an impressive vocabulary and a knack for esoteric citation that makes Salinger's Seymour Glass look like a dunce. Following the mysterious death of her butterfly-obsessed mother, Blue and her father, Gareth, embark, in another nod to Nabokov, on a tour of picturesque college towns, never staying anyplace longer than a semester. This doesn't bode well for Blue's social life, but when the Van Meers settle in Stockton, N.C., for the entirety of Blue's senior year, she befriends — sort of — a group of eccentric geniuses (referred to by their classmates as the Bluebloods) and their ringleader, film studies teacher Hannah Schneider. As Blue becomes enmeshed with Hannah and the Bluebloods, the novel becomes a murder mystery so intricately plotted that, after absorbing the late-chapter revelations, readers will be tempted to start again at the beginning in order to watch the tiny clues fall into place. Like its intriguing main characters, this novel is many things at once — it's a campy, knowing take on the themes that made The Secret History and Prep such massive bestsellers, a wry sendup of most of the Western canon and, most importantly, a sincere and uniquely twisted look at love, coming of age and identity." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:"A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review)
Review:"The joys of this shrewdly playful narrative lie not only in the high-low darts and dives of Pessl's tricky plotting, but in her prose, which floats and runs as if by instinct, unpremeditated and unerring." Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review
Review:"Anything familiar about this hip, ambitious and imaginative book is easily overshadowed by its many pleasures....There are many wonderful young writers out there, but it's always refreshing to find another with such confidence, who takes such joy in the magical tricks words can perform." Los Angeles Times
Review:"The novel is generating a great deal of buzz that will excite the curiosity of readers who enjoy postmodern excesses and indulgences of this sort." Booklist
Review:"This blockbuster debut, over 500 pages chock-full of literary and pop cultural references and illustrations by Pessl herself, demands attention." People
Review:"Witty and exuberant...part road-trip adventure, part idiosyncratic Great Books survey, with dashes of romantic comedy and murder mystery thrown in....Such pyrotechnics place the author alongside young, eclectic talents like Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Zadie Smith." Vogue
Review:"All the stars seem aligned for the twenty-something author." Time.com
Review:"Donna Tartt goes postmodern in this eclectically intellectual murder mystery....The writing is clever, the text rich with subtle literary allusion....Sharp, snappy fun for the literary-minded." Kirkus Reviews
Review:"The most flashily erudite first novel since Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is
Illuminated." Janet Maslin, the New York Times
Synopsis:Structured around a syllabus for a Great Works of Literature class, 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. About the AuthorMarisha Pessl graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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