Special Topics in Calamity Physics

I can’t talk about notable adolescent protagonists without mentioning Blue van Meer. Marisha Pessl’s cult-favorite debut made an impact on me as a teenage reader, but I recently picked it back up on a whim and was just as enthralled as an adult.

This is a formally inventive novel interspersed with hand-drawn illustrations and pop quizzes. It also defies generic categorization, weaving in elements of murder mystery, campus novel, and coming-of-age saga. It’s a lot to take in (and it clocks in at a door-stopping 540 pages), but Blue’s always-surprising observations keep the pages turning.

I love books that I happen to pick up by chance and fall in love with them. I picked this up at a bookstore in the airport in Johannesburg, South Africa, when I had a long layover. It was Pessl’s debut, and I was drawn in by the strength of the writing on the opening pages. The strength of the writing alone made me unable to put it down, and I finished it on the way back to the U.S.

The main character is immature and often snarky and self-absorbed, but that’s the point. It’s a story about elite high… show more.

As I read the first two paragraphs of this truly extraordinary novel, I smirked. The author, through the character of the father of the girl named Blue, was daring me to read this book. Oh boy, this is gonna be a good one, I thought, and it was.

Reading any novel is a trip inside the writer’s head–true also of music and art–and when I opened this book to the contents page, I discovered Pessl had named each chapter for another novel, which she topped off with a “Final Exam”!

I loved reading the sentences, not just for the story… show more.