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Special Topics in Calamity Physics Paperback – Illustrated, April 24, 2007

by Marisha Pessl (Author)

4.1 1,315 ratings

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The mesmerizing New York Times bestseller by the author of Night Film

Marisha Pessl’s dazzling debut sparked raves from critics and heralded the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center of Special Topics in Calamity Physics 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.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“A whirling, glittering, multifaceted marvel, delivered in an irrepressibly smart and flamboyant new voice. . . . Q: Is Special Topics in Calamity Physics required reading for devotees of inventive new fiction? A: Yes.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“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. . . . This skylarking book will leave readers salivating for more.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“A blockbuster debut.”
—People (Critic’s Choice)

“Gripping and dark, funny and poignant . . . Pessl’s talent for verbal acrobatics keeps the pages flipping.”
—USA Today

“Witty and exuberant . . . Pessl’s pyrotechnics place her alongside young, eclectic talents like Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Zadie Smith.”
—Vogue

“Hip, ambitious, and imaginative . . . It’s always refreshing to find a writer who takes such joy in the magical tricks words can perform.”
—Los Angeles Times

“A frisky, smarty-pants debut . . . An escapist extravaganza packed with literary and pop culture allusions, mischievous characterizations, erotic intrigue, murders, and unstoppable narrative energy.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Extravagant, witty and dark, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a sprawling campus novel, an intricate murder mystery, a coming-of-age tale and a sly satire of intellectualism and academia. Her prose is . . . vivid, erupting in a freefall of wordplay, wisecracks, encyclopedia tidbits, and a barrage of cultural references. . . . Her enthusiasm for language is a delight.”
—Miami Herald

“There is a voice here to like, part Huck Finn, part Holden Caulfield, part Fran Leibowitz, and part Nora Ephron.”
—Harper’s

“A real novel, one of substance and breadth, with an arresting story and that rarest of delights, a great ending.”
—Salon

“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. It reminded me of my lost, bad-girl days. I loved this book.”
—Audrey Niffenegger, bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry

“Beneath the foam of this exuberant debut is a dark, strong drink.”
—Jonathan Franzen, National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections and Freedom

About the Author

Marisha Pessl is the author of Night Film and Special Topics in Calamity Physics, her bestselling debut, which was awarded the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize (now the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize) and selected as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. She lives with her husband and daughter in New York City.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (April 24, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 514 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143112120
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143112129
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.44 x 5.52 x 1.17 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #108,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #79 in Humorous American Literature
- #7,814 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #10,449 in Suspense Thrillers

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4.1 1,315 ratings

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Marisha Pessl's bestselling debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, won the 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. Pessl grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and currently resides in New York City.

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sb-lynn

Unique Page-turner

Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2006

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I read a lot of books, and this was one of the most unique and pleasurable books I've read this year.

Summary, no spoilers:

This book is narrated by a young girl named Blue Van Meer. The first chapter starts out with Blue at Harvard, when she has an epiphany and decides to write about her life.

Although Blue starts out telling us some things about her early years, the majority of the novel takes place during Blue's senior year in high school.

Blue is an oddball, brainy child of a brilliant and eccentric professor who is constantly moving from place to place. Blue's mother died when she was very young, and her father is the main influence in her life.

Blue meets and is befriended by a charismatic, beautiful teacher named Hannah Schneider. Through Hannah, she becomes part of an elite group of kids known as the Bluebloods.

We know from the very first few pages of this book that Hannah has died, and as the story unfolds we learn what happened and how this has impacted Blue's life.

In part coming of age novel, in part mystery, this is an absolute page-turner. It is a big novel - just over 500 pages, and the last 200 pages or so especially are exhilarating.

The problem? As many a reviewer has discussed, Pessl loves her similes and puns, and the book is replete with them - in addition to many parentheticals and book (real and unreal) references.

At some points it felt like a constant tic to me, and I was concerned about the author feeling the need to be so clever with every single sentence. As a reader, it becomes exhausting.

Yet, yet....I was amazed how Pessl made me laugh and at the same time say some profound things in the same sentences. She is an astonishing talent. If she had just taken it down a notch in places, I think this book could have only been better. As it is, it is very, very good.

I highly recommend this book. I had not read any reviews before reading this for fear of spoilers, but I had thought and now see that others have mentioned that this books is reminiscent of Donna Tartt's The Secret History both in setting and in some ways, in mood.

Highly recommended. I look forward to this author's next novel. What a talent.

9 people found this helpful

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TheBookFetish

Quirky and Clever

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2013

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Don't let the title fool you. Special Topics in Calamity Physics isn't a science book. Marisha Pessl's debut novel, published in 2007, is clever and quirky and I couldn't stop turning the pages.

Blue Van Meer's life has been anything but ordinary. Traveling the country with her professor father as he moves from one guest lecturer post to another has provided Blue with a thorough, if rather unconventional, education. However, like any teenager, she longs for roots and friends, and her father agrees to take a position that will allow Blue to attend St. Gallway's School for the last part of her high school education.

At St. Gallway's, Blue is suddenly and somewhat reluctantly thrust into a clique called the Bluebloods, spearheaded by eccentric drama teacher Hannah Schneider. But after a drowning and then a hanging, Blue finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery with ramifications far greater- and far more personal- than she ever imagined.

Not only does Special Topics In Calamity Physics tell an interesting story, it is told in an interesting way. Complete with sources referenced in parenthetical documentation, and with supporting illustrations and diagrams, Blue reveals her story almost as if it were an academic paper.

The characters don't seem quite real- they are like the ultra rich, way too cool kids of movies like Cruel Intentions- a little surreal, a little more adult than my counterparts when I was that age. Their language is more adult, more academic and not full of teenaged slang. Yet the angst is very real, the chances they take, the games they play. And at the heart of it all is the enigmatic Hannah Schneider. Hannah has her own motivations for pulling together the Bluebloods and putting Blue in their midst, and as readers, we're taken along for the ride as Blue figures out why.

As I mentioned, sources are well referenced in the book, and at times this was distracting. I wanted to know a bit more about the source, or else just wanted to skip over it to get to the next part of the story. However, the more I read, the less bothered I found myself. The illustrations and other visual aids did enhance the story, even on an ereader as opposed to the paperback.

I wanted the story to reveal itself faster. That's not to say it was a slow read, just that I was that eager to find out the story and what happened. There's a twist at the end, which I guessed just a few pages before it was revealed. However, figuring this out takes away nothing from the story. In fact, Pessl plants just enough clues that I'd be surprised if a number of folks didn't guess the twist.

I think this book is a good candidate for book clubs- the characters, the style, the plot all leave plenty of room for discussion. Checking Amazon, it looks like this is the only book Pessl has published to date. I hope she writes more. I'd love to see a second novel from her.

5 people found this helpful

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Andrea

Muy bueno!

Reviewed in Mexico on January 22, 2024

Verified Purchase

LLegó justo cuando se estipuló. Llego en muy buenas condiciones, parece que al ser un libro con muchas páginas se movió un poco la portada al encuadernarlo pero no se nota a simple vista.

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KelZ

Good book

Reviewed in Canada on July 19, 2018

Verified Purchase

Nice read. I really enjoyed it.

Lady Fancifull

Tartt's younger, more extrovert, funnier sister?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 19, 2014

Verified Purchase

Comparisons between the two are most clear between Calamity Physics and Secret History. Both writers are FIERCELY and I mean FIERCELY intelligent and erudite, widely read literati; good users of language, unfurlers of a measured narrative drive, but determined to make their readers observe the countryside they are travelling through, and not just driven speedily by `what happens next' plot impatience. Both create complex, layered characters, both set their books within academia, and moreover the academia of the glitteringly brilliant. In both books, there is a charismatic, magus type teacher figure who exerts undue and ultimately destructive power over a group of young, impressionable acolytes. This is obviously a well-worn groove, which can be brilliantly done - Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie an early example of the genre, and can be, well, dire. Pessl, like Tartt, inhabits the vibrantly successful end of the spectrum, though both lack Spark's ability to pare down to the bone, and produce a piece of writing which runs clear, arrow like and lethal to its conclusion.

I know that this book has garnered widely differing reviews, with some readers at screaming pitch, finding Pessl arrogant, pretentious and a show-off, and others (I'm one) absolutely savouring the literary illusions (each chapter has the title of a piece of literature which references in some way that chapter) She also does full referencing of texts .Blue is of course now a student within higher education and referencing is de rigueur. Some of the texts are real, some are there because Pessl is playing with us, and you sense the mischief. There are also what Blue calls `visual aids' scattered throughout the text - her drawings of photographs, or just her drawings, illustrating the people she is writing. And, yes the illustrations are from Pessl's doubly gifted pen.

I think it comes down to, do you resonate with the author's voice - do you want to listen to what she says, does she grab your attention, or do you find her like chalk on a blackboard. I found Pessl - or rather Pessl subsumed into Blue, marvellous funny, witty, her humour sharp, dry and sometimes cruelly deadly.

I guess this IS Pessl's wit, as the central character of Night Film is equally acerbic and ouchly, wickedly, funny. Where Night Film references films, Calamity Physics is literary,

For a brief flavour, Blue on her father, who unfortunately was a magnet for females, whom Blue, named the June Bugs - they had an intense life in gareth van Meer's bed, just like those brilliant short summer insects, before being suddenly abandoned for a newer bug:

"Dad picked up women the way certain wool pants can't help but pick up lint.For years I had a nickname for them, though I feel a little guilty using it now :June Bugs(see "Figeater Beetle", Ordinary Insects, Vol.24)

There was Mona Letrovski, the actress from Chicago with wide-set eyes and dark hair on her arms who liked to shout , "Gareth, you're a fool, " with her back to him. Dad's cue to run to her, turn her around to see the Look of Bitter Longing on her face. Only Dad never turned her round to see the Bitter Longing. Instead, he stared at her back as if it were an abstract painting. Then he went into the kitchen for a glass of bourbon."

Blue (and the Bluebloods) are, yes, at times operatic, self-indulgent, melodramatic, cruel and without a shred of empathy. But they are very young, still, and often this age is cruelly judgmental, especially to its peers. Experience and suffering (life) develop empathy and nuance.

After having taken us through the huge events, the teenage tantrums, the cruelly funny dismissive barbs of young teens, which it is (or was) impossible for this reader to avoid laughing at, whilst wincing at the cruel put-downs, Pessl skilfully steers us to the not-so-sudden bleakness of an ending. The one we do not want, but the one which changes Blue, the one which makes her able to "feel a little guilty using it now". Blue enters bleakness, the wit and the humour suddenly ripped aside, and we suddenly are slap-bang into a depth. The ending, which I am still thinking about, still going `oh no, oh no' is perfect, and Pessl has made the reader inhabit this likeable, frightening, irritating, far too worldly, intelligent adolescent, and really engage with the journey.

When I read the book again (as I surely will) I will ensure I have also read the chapter heading literary works I DON'T know, in order to gain a bit of extra nuanced flavour from the chapter it announces. It is absolutely possible to enjoy this book hugely if you are completely unfamiliar with any of the texts, but knowing them, adds a bit of spice.

6 people found this helpful