Special Topics in Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.39 You Save: $10.61 (71%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Book Review: wildly entertaining prose in a fun, engaging story
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved the prose in this book! The story is a mix of bildungsroman and whodunit. At the start, Blue van Meer is a college student who sits down to write the story of her last year of high school, in which Blue grows up and someone named Hannah dies (that much is revealed in the first few pages).
The characters are fun and the story is engaging (until the end, when it's completely addictive). But, as USA Today put it, "the real star of the doorstop-weighty tome is the nimble prose. Pessl's talent for verbal acrobatics keeps the pages flipping with minimal effort." Completely true! My wife and I read the first two thirds aloud, which only heightened the pleasure of the prose. Here are a couple of passages I enjoyed:
"Unfortunately, my instinctive response to overhearing campus-wide chitchat of the aforementioned kind was not The Pacino (godfather-styled vengeance), The Pesci (urges to stick a ballpoint pen in someone's throat), The Costner (flat, frontierlike amusement), The Spacey (scathing verbal retaliation accompanied by a blank facial expression) nor The Penn (blue-collared bellows and moans)" [p. 364].
"She asked where we were from (`Ohio,' seethed Dad), what year I was (`Senior,' fumed Dad), how we liked our new house (`It's fun,' frothed Dad) and explained that she had moved here three years ago from San Francisco (`Astonishing,' fizzed Dad)" [p58].
Pessl also crams the book with quotes from and allusions to loads of films and books, fiction and non-fiction. I found this extremely entertaining (as I also find it entertaining to identify the links between my own reading and viewing and life). (I was disappointed to learn, upon looking up several of the books on the Library of Congress website, that most of them are Pessl's inventions. But the allusions are still fun.)
Entertainment Weekly's review sums up the book well: "A 514-page escapist extravaganza packed with literary and pop culture allusions, mischievous characterizations, erotic intrigue, murders, and unstoppable (occasionally unruly) narrative energy." Metacritic (a website that aggregates professional reviews) lists 10 outstanding reviews, 9 favorable, and 7 mixed.
Note on content: The book has some strong language and some macabre material (one or two characters are killed), and some sexual references.
Book Review: In a word: 1 Stars
By the end of the first CD's listening to STCP, I was STCPed out -- but I persisted. So many great reviews, I thought. Greatness must lie up ahead...16 additional CDs' listening, and 2 weeks later, having kicked, clawed, and hair-pulled my way to the colossally annoying ending of this totally insipid novel, I am leagues-beyond-STCPed out.
A plea to editors: do your job! About 7/8 of this novel could have been cut with no damage to the story. At the 11th hour, in the last 1/8 of its bloat, STCP verged on a kind of redemption when its plot took an unexpected "Usual Suspects"-style twist. Though a totally ludicrous plot development, it was at least an entertaining one. And on account of it -- and the fact that Pessl is, I'll grant, a half-decent writer -- I might otherwise have poneyed up a second star. But then Pessl hit me with her 'quiz' chapter -- which may rate as THE most annoying piece of prose ever put to paper. And naturally I was jarred back to my 1-star senses. (See visual aid 14: the writer of this review, wild-eyed with annoyance, flinging copy of STCP across room, cats hissing in sympathy.)
A few of the things I despised about this novel:
1. its 20 metaphor per page minimum
2. its completely vacuous characters, of whom
3. "Dad" rates among fiction's most annoying (does Pessl really think her "Dad"isms, "Dad" monologues, tidbits from "Dad" writings sound remotely like the isms/monologues/tidbits of a genius as "Dad" is alleged to be?), which brings me to
4. the endless quoting of books real and imagined, which, I can only assume, is meant to give something of the same impression of the author (i.e., only such a genius [Pessl] could possibly write such geniuses [as "Dad" and Blue]; how do we [readers] know she [Pessl] is such a genius? Because she has read SOOOOO much -- or, just as ingenius on her part -- she is able to conjur up SOOOO much faux reading; how inventive!). Every 'citation' in this book was another golden opportunity for Pessl's editor to wield the red pen (see, "Enough Already: The Total Lameness of Endless Pseudo-Citations in Fiction", Saloon.com, March 15, 1998).
Looking for a very very wearisome reading experience? Check out STCP.
Book Review: Way too long and ultimately disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
The heroine and narrator of this book is the fiercely intelligent and abnormally well-read 16-year-old Blue van Meer. She takes us on a 669-page journey that could, and ought, to have been a lot shorter.
Blue lives with her father, her mother having died 10 years earlier, and they travel the United States from small town to small town. Her father we're told is devastatingly attractive and toys with the affections of a different woman in each town, sleeping with them and then dumping them. He teaches as a visiting professor in second or third tier colleges and Blue has become used to starting in a new school more or less every semester.
The book opens at the beginning of her senior year when they show up in Stockton, a small town in North Carolina, and Blue enrols in a swanky private school for her final push to Harvard. She is befriended by an enigmatic teacher, Hannah Schneider, who has collected around her a group of five other students. As the book opens, Blue explains that she is writing to make sense of the events that led to Schneider's gruesome death. Did she hang herself, or was she murdered?
After 100 pages, I would have given this book five stars. I was attracted by Blue's weird habit of citing other works (most of them invented by the author) to justify all her observations and feelings. After 200 pages, I was down to four stars and after 300 down to three. After that, I slogged grimly to the end.
A book of this length has to present a compelling tale and a gallery of well-developed and convincing characters. The story here is too thin and insubstantial to support such a tome and the characters are mostly not realistic. Hannah never came into focus for me. Blue's father is well-drawn but tiresome. The other members of the group of students just don't come to life. In the final 100 pages, there is an abrupt change of tone from coming of age novel to detective story -- a jarring switch but at least it revived my interest.
Pessl is clearly talented. She was let down by her editors. Inside this fat behemoth of a book was possibly a thinner, healthier, better one trying vainly to escape.
Book Review: Prepare for a wild and funny ride
Summary: 5 Stars
No, this book is not a series of essays by physicist and author Richard Feynman. No, it's not the cliff notes version of Physics 401. Believe it or not, this is a wildly funny yet disconcerting coming of age novel about one very intelligent teenager (Blue van Meer) with one very intelligent but restless father (Gareth van Meer). Dad is an intellectual's intellectual, constantly writing articles on foreign affairs, reading obscure tomes on every subject and endlessly giving Blue the benefit of his great wisdom. There's no mother on the scene: she was killed in a car accident when Blue was five, and Blue and Dad have moved from one visiting professorship to another all over the US, never staying more than a semester in one place.
Until, that is, they arrive in Stockton, North Carolina for Blue's senior year in high school. Dad vows to stay there the entire year and Blue's coming of age really begins. She becomes involved with the mysterious Hannah Schneider, a part-time high school teacher, and her collection of protégés, five high-school seniors in Blue's class (none of whom take the slightest interest in Blue).Why Hannah has befriended Blue remains unclear, and there are persistent rumors that she has a mysterious, perhaps even a shady past. Eventually a man dies at a party at Hannah's house under very odd circumstances and Blue even imagines she sees Dad at the same party. The coincidences pile up and Blue learns some very strange truths as she emerges into adulthood and heads toward her first year at Harvard.
Marisha Pessl tells a whale of a story, building literary allusions and suspense in a wobbly tandem as Blue and the reader try together to figure out what's going on. It's also a very funny book with Dad's Bourbon Moods and June Bug girlfriends and Blue's many obscure academic citations. It's hard to believe that this is a debut novel: the writing is adroit and polished, the characters are lively and interesting and the story builds, builds, builds...by the last 50 pages or so, I simply could not put it down. I'll be waiting eagerly for Pessl's next book.
Book Review: If you're still on the fence....
Summary: 5 Stars
I'll be honest, I almost bypassed this book. The reviews were off putting. The over all ranking was not good. Phrases like "pretentious" and "overly loquacious"were sprinkled liberally throughout the reviews. This all added up to a "I should pass on this one" in my book. Even the positive reviews mentioned numerous negative aspects. So why did I read the book? Someone asked me to. Since they asked nicely, I complied, if not without some misgivings.
Wow, what a clever, refreshing read. Less of a whodunnit and and more of a what the....? It's the book you go back and re-read the first chapter after you're done. It's the book you don't care how late it is or how early you have to get up the next morning. It's the book you're sorry when it's over. It's the book with clever asides that make you chuckle, or you just don't get, but it doesn't matter. It's the book that you wouldn't mind reading again.
A brief plot summary wouldn't do it justice or be accurate. If I said Blue and her father have worked all their lives toward Blue graduating high school as valedictorian and getting in to Harvard you would think it's a coming of age chick lit book. But there is more than that involved. If I said the book details the harrowing experiences of Blue as she struggles to find her niche in a clique driven private school, it wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface of the real plot. If I made some obscure reference to Blue's blazing intellect that she uses in an effort to solve one of the greatest mysteries of her life, you'd wrongly picture her as Nancy Drew. If I said it is more a story about social revolution, terror cells and secret societies that wouldn't be quite right either.
It is hard to summarize without spoiling the story. What you read is a heavily referenced, pseudo research paper that details Blue's efforts to understand the many events that unfold over the course of her senior year of high school.
All in all it's a great read. If you're still undecided, consider this a little shove towards diving in.