Special Topics in Calamity Physics [Paperback]

Marisha Pessl (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 24, 2007

?Dazzling,? (People) ?Exuberant,? (Vogue) ?marvelously entertaining,? (The Dallas Morning News) Marisha Pessl?s mesmerizing debut has critics raving and heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center of this ?cracking good read?4 is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway school, she finds some?a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel?with ?visual aids? drawn by the author?that has won over readers of all ages.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Pessl's showy (often too showy) debut novel, littered as it is with literary references and obscure citations, would seem to make an unlikely candidate for a successful audiobook. Yet actor and singer Emily Janice Card (a North Carolina native like the author) has a ball with Pessl's knotty, digressive prose, eating up Pessl's array of voices, impressions and asides like an ice-cream sundae. Card reads as if she is composing the book as she goes along, with a palpable sense of enjoyment present in almost every line reading. Her girlish voice, immature but knowing, is the perfect sound for Pessl's protagonist and narrator Blue van Meer, wise beyond her years even as she stumbles through a disastrous final year of high school. Card brings out the best in Pessl's novel and papers over its weak spots as ably as she can.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

With a murder that occurs in the opening pages and a narrator who joins an elite clique of students, Special Topics bears resemblance to Donna Tartt's 1992 classic, The Secret History—as the novel's publisher is more than happy to remind us. Critics call this comparison a publicity coup, as the two novels differ greatly in narration, orchestration, and tone. Organized as a "Great Books" course, the novel requires careful attention (and literary knowledge) from its readers, especially when Blue spouts esoteric tidbits. Although most critics were utterly compelled by Marisha Pessl's debut novel, a few thought it mean-spirited and too smart for its own good. "A 500-page headache is as possible as a bracing joyride," notes the New York Times.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (April 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143112120
• ISBN-13: 978-0143112129
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (345 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

335 of 373 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An ocean of words, so much left unsaid August 13, 2006

By Amy Tiemann VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Part of me is tempted to give "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" 3 stars, but that would give the impression that I found it mediocre and passionless. On the contrary, part of me loved the book to 5 stars, but the excessive loquatiousness of the narrator's expression nearly drove me to distraction. So my mathematical reducion will stay at 4 stars, with reservations explained. By Chapter 8 I was still not engaged enough to convince me that I was going to actually read the whole book. But by the end I stayed awake reading as late as I could one night, and stole away enough time the next day to finish it. Reading this story was like running a reverse marathon that started out as a meandering stroll and ended in a sprint.

And when I say marathon, I mean marathon. Most reviewers have noted the length of the book, weighing in at over 500 pages. Individual sentences stretched on and on with strange metaphors, literary allusions and references, and parenthetical comments galore. Much of it was dense academic blathering--in character, to be sure, but still very annoying to read. Oftentimes I'd find myself strugging with a long sentence, breathlessly awaiting a period like a drowing person begging for someone to throw her a life preserver. If you can get through this style of writing, there is a compelling story waiting to be decoded, but this book won't be for everyone. Though I felt like I was cheating a bit, after the first half of the story I gave myself permission to give up on close textual analysis and read like a skipping stone. The author's pacing picked up in the later stages of the book as well, but as a reader I did make a conscious choice to step in as an editor.

If you still think you'd enjoy the book, I'd say stop reading the reviews and just go read it.... I'll say a few more things without being too spoiler-ish. After reading narrator Blue's interpretation of events, I am dying to talk to other people who have read the book to find out what they think really happened. Blue unleashes a torrent of thoughts on her readers, but they are the analyses of an incredibly erudite 16-year-old who lived within the heart of a very tangled web. In other words, what is left unsaid in the story is almost as compelling as the picture that Blue assembles as her own understanding. Blue is an unreliable narrator, not in the sense that she is trying to deceive the reader, but rather that there is only so much truth she can piece together and face. The true brilliance of Marisha Pessl's writing is that she provides enough information to allow the reader to come to some very different conclusions than Blue, based on Blue's first-person narrative.

Maddeningly, though, I came looking for a story, and I don't have time to immerse myself in solving a dense puzzle. Pessl ends the book with a "Final Exam" that stands in for the last chapter. It was a choice hailed by many critics, but it left me feeling hollow and put out. The "testing" of the reader occurs throughout the book, in ways amusing and annoying. Recurring words and images (variations of the word "oily" and references to coins and stillettos) felt clunky, rather than enlightening. Pessl has created a website for the book that would most likely yield additional clues if one would search diligently for the secrets. But much as I love the TV show "Lost," but have no interest in the ongoing "Lost Experience" on the web, I am resigned to accepting that I may never unravel the knot that still lies at the heart of "Special Topics in Calamity Physics." Writing a master's thesis on Nabokov would be a good place to start, but I think we'd all agree that's asking a great deal of one's readers. Read more ›

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful read. May 29, 2008

By C. McMullen

Format:Paperback

After reading several reviews of Special Topics in Calamity physics, I was hesitant to read the book, but I am very glad that I did. Although the other reviews are correct in saying that the beginning is rather slow, the book gains speed right around page 170. However, the information provided to you in these first 170 pages ends up being rather important by the end of the story. There are a lot of little things, mostly small bits of information about Hannah, but other things as well, that end up coming into play much later in to book, somewhere around page 400. I agree that parts of the text could have been cut out, but I fail to comprehend why one would want to do so. Marisha Pessl's writing technique kept me entertained throughout the 170 pages of seemingly useless information. I found myself captivated by her use of both citations and wonderfully detailed descriptions. Also, Pessl's twists in the story are far beyond what I expected. They kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the book. I was especially interested in Nigel, although I am not sure why. I don't identify with his character per se, but I wish she had developed his, and all of the Bluebloods characters a bit more. The only thing about this book that I didn't like was the lack of an ending. I understand that that was somewhat the point, to leave it open for interpretation. It was even mentioned earlier in the book how much Gareth Van Meer hated absolute endings because it left nothing up to the imagination. So although I think that this is a fitting ending, I, being one of the "Americans" that he speaks of, wish that the ending had been at least a bit more definite. All in all, I think that Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a very well written book.... It is not, however, a "quick read" (Although it may be considered one for Blue.) Read more ›

103 of 121 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating book by an up and coming author August 14, 2006

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

It is clear that twenty-something Marisha Pessl has talent, judging from the reviews already garnered for her debut novel, SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS. It is also a given that many will automatically compare SPECIAL TOPICS --- or, as I like to call it, "The Book That Is Bound To Wind Up On Many End-Of-The-Year-Bests Lists" --- to Donna Tartt's THE SECRET HISTORY. What hasn't been decided is whether or not readers will trudge through the 300 or so "set-up pages" in order to get to the truly exhilarating final 200.

From the get-go, SPECIAL TOPICS might seem a bit off-putting to some. Its plot unfolds, for the most part, on yet another wealthy high school campus, narrated by a protagonist (who some will swear bares a striking resemblance to Pessl) who is quite precocious and full of Big Ideas that are exhaustingly annotated, often with references to various books in parentheses --- a cumulative bibliography of sorts. Each chapter, although plot-driven, is tied to a certain curricular theme --- mainly, a well-known and often revered work of literary mastery (OTHELLO, HEART OF DARKNESS, THE TRIAL, PARADISE LOST, etc.). There is an Introduction, of course, as well as a cleverly designed afterword (aptly titled "Final Exam") that consists of questions readers might enjoy noodling over after finishing the actual story. All in all, it's a kitschy package for the publisher and booksellers, and a clever ploy to attract potential readers who may or may not be into the gimmick.

To give a brief synopsis of the book without giving anything away, SPECIAL TOPICS follows 16-year-old Blue van Meer and her father (a distinguished college professor) as they flit around the country, living in various college towns, mostly for one year at a time.... Most of the book's meat takes place during Blue's senior year of high school at St. Gallway, a prep school in a small North Carolina mountain town called Stockton. To her surprise, Blue is soon befriended by the Bluebloods, an exclusive group of co-eds led by a film teacher (yes, a teacher), Hannah Schneider. For much of the book's beginning, the action (or lack thereof) revolves around Blue's interactions with various members of the Bluebloods, while she attempts to adjust to her new environment, maintain her valedictorian status, and continue on in her close but motherless relationship with her father. Thus far, the story is fairly status quo and reads as such.

A little more than halfway through the book, however, SPECIAL TOPICS takes a turn for the better and becomes infinitely more interesting. After a number of other minor yet noteworthy calamities, the Bluebloods go on a camping trip in the Great Smoky Mountains and Hannah Schneider winds up dead, dangling from a tree. (Not to worry, this detail is mentioned in the Introduction.) What follows is an adrenalin-driven thrill ride that is so clever and so delightfully complicated that readers will surely be kept on the edge of their seats until the very end. And the best part is that the whodunit is never fully solved --- or is it?

The question still remains: Does the gruesome conspiracy theory mystery disguised as an erudite treatise on teenage angst and literary greatness gimmick work?

Pessl's heavily weighted academic and artistic background (she studied English and Creative Writing at Columbia, and has dabbled in acting and the fine arts) is clearly present on every page of the book. Her incessant attention to detail, thematic chapter headings, and aforementioned literary side notes are often accompanied by art class line drawings as well. The effect of this combination lands somewhere between the tantalizing and the absurd. Sure, it's helpful to have a bit of defining background, but sometimes the onslaught approach (especially when reading a juicy murder mystery) feels like overkill and a little unnecessary.

Yet, despite it all, many readers will still slog through the minutiae to find themselves fully captivated by Pessl's scintillating world of intrigue. Her pacing toward the end of the story is spot-on, and her talent for playing up the suspense without ever fully giving in to it is brilliant. She excels at writing for shock value and never underestimates the intelligence (and imagination) of her readers. After reading the "Final Exam," some more dedicated readers might even feel the impulse to read through various sections of the book again in order to fit the pieces of this fascinating puzzle together.

--- Reviewed by Alexis Burling Read more ›