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lavender_lake's review against another edition
1.75
I don’t get the hype. Felt pretentious and seeping with internalized misogyny. Trudged through it all just for an unsatisfying denouement. Also: 600+ pages is more than excessive for such a flimsy plot.
lactomar's review against another edition
4.0
Very enjoyable modern fiction. Great plot, good twist, enjoyable writing style
lexaprophet's review against another edition
3.0
the literary references were self-indulgent, overbearing, and a bit unbearable. a great book in terms of mystery but everything that was a reveal (or perhaps a question) came so quickly that i didn't have time to breathe? otherwise, it was a long but mostly enjoyable read.
cl1cm's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Most of the book was a coming of age story of a girl with a penchant for mentioning famous authors to show how well-read she is. I liked her pretentious narrative voice because it made the book memorable. There were some mysterious developments towards the end that I didn't see coming. I give the author credit for the audacity with which she ended her book.
livyjoyce's review against another edition
I’ve been reading this for almost a month and I don’t want to pick it up. It’s not bad and it has some great elements but it is overwhelmingly pretentious and a hard attempt at coming off highbrow. It’s a little exhausting. I know I’m clocking out over half the way through with having read 300 pages but I don’t think I can endure another 200.
sarah_nera's review against another edition
5.0
Best new fiction I've read in years. Fascinating in style, full of intriguing references and unforeseen twists. Well, unforeseen by me anyway!
lexybutschli's review against another edition
4.0
I'm pretty enamored with this novel - it's kind of a love letter to English degree holders. Clever and engrossing structure with a deceptively dark storyline that culminates in a possibly heartbreaking but fascinating final few pages. I can recognize that ultimately the story can be somewhat meandering and cluttered, certainly, but it's a pleasant sort of clutter.
jessplayin's review against another edition
5.0
Thought provoking, heartbreaking, and stunningly beautiful Pessl has crafted another masterpiece. I loved Night Film and while Special Topics is much slower and more dense it did not disappoint.
Part thriller, part coming of age story the novel follows Blue Van Meer and her obsession with the death or her mysterious teacher friend Hannah Schneider. This premise leads to some truly wonderful quotes and talks about life. It's also one of the most ambitious styles of novel, as Pessl crafts the whole thing as a school curriculum. A must read, a must own.
Part thriller, part coming of age story the novel follows Blue Van Meer and her obsession with the death or her mysterious teacher friend Hannah Schneider. This premise leads to some truly wonderful quotes and talks about life. It's also one of the most ambitious styles of novel, as Pessl crafts the whole thing as a school curriculum. A must read, a must own.
grouchomarxist's review against another edition
1.0
I waited a long time to read this book - years, in fact. I was more curious than I was excited, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Ultimately, I was not just disappointed. I was MAD.
Here, as I explained them to a friend, are the key issues with this book:
1) Every single sentence is overwrought and overstuffed with a pretentious, stilted, stupid simile (CONFIDENTIAL TO MARISHA PESSL: There are, in fact, literary devices other than similes; I just employed one called "alliteration" in the main sentence back there). To an extent, I get it - the narrator is supposed to be a smug teenager, sure, pretentiousness abides like so many tiny Lebowskis (see what I did there?). And after all, HOW ELSE WILL THE READER KNOW THE CHARACTER LIKES TO READ A LOT? But a truly masterful storyteller - the kind who deserved the accolades this book got - would have found a way to make Blue's "voice" less excruciating.
2) A minor point, but significant: The book is supposed to take place in a very specific, contemporary-ish time frame. But Pessl's lack of direct acknowledgement of the mode of being in 2004 (say, cell phones...the Internet...Wikipedia...Google) just about became a plot hole. Speaking of, I just found one of the story's main premises - that an attractive 44 year old teacher would just hang out with her students as friends - so totally absurd in a post-Columbine, post-Mary Kay Letourneau world that it brought my blood pressure to unhealthy levels. The story is and is not contemporary, and the characters lack the sensibility or perspective that actually living in the United States in 2004 would have given them. This also relates to #3.
3) Pessl also obviously did NO research on what an academic career actually is or entails. The academic world she portrays is roughly akin to Kafka's portrayal of America in Amerika, written without his ever having gone there, except even the fragments that exist of Amerika represent a masterpiece and Calamity Physics is rotten tripe. Ooh, a metaphor! PAGING MARISHA PESSL, who clearly never took Introduction to Poetic Devices: Way Beyond Similes. Anyway, the premise of an itinerant academic who is still well-respected and published is blatantly absurd, almost fantastic. Oh, you're an adjunct / lecturer who moves multiple times per year? Yet you have a $17,000 desk? Also, people keep HIRING you? I dismissed it for a while under the guise of what we'll call here Magical Realism, as well as the half-assed mystery Pessl sets up in the final fifth of the book, but after a while, the way she played fast and loose with the academy made me so livid I wanted to take this out back and burn it on my pillar of back issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
I wish I could think of something conciliatory to say, but I hated this book. I only finished it because my new thing is finishing all books I start, and it didn't take me years with this one only because I got it from the library. The kindest thing I could possibly say is that Marisha Pessl is punching way above her weight. Unfortunately, she ain't no Nabokov.
The laborious process of reading this book felt like 514 pages of a precocious child shrieking, "Aren't I clever?" into my face, only they were pronouncing clever incorrectly because they were not, in fact, very bright, and also projecting spittle into my face every single time.
With apologies to the late great Roger Ebert, and his masterful take-down of North (1994), "I hated this book. Hated hated hated hated hated this book. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant reader-insulting sentence of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the readers by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.
Ultimately, I was not just disappointed. I was MAD.
Here, as I explained them to a friend, are the key issues with this book:
1) Every single sentence is overwrought and overstuffed with a pretentious, stilted, stupid simile (CONFIDENTIAL TO MARISHA PESSL: There are, in fact, literary devices other than similes; I just employed one called "alliteration" in the main sentence back there). To an extent, I get it - the narrator is supposed to be a smug teenager, sure, pretentiousness abides like so many tiny Lebowskis (see what I did there?). And after all, HOW ELSE WILL THE READER KNOW THE CHARACTER LIKES TO READ A LOT? But a truly masterful storyteller - the kind who deserved the accolades this book got - would have found a way to make Blue's "voice" less excruciating.
2) A minor point, but significant: The book is supposed to take place in a very specific, contemporary-ish time frame. But Pessl's lack of direct acknowledgement of the mode of being in 2004 (say, cell phones...the Internet...Wikipedia...Google) just about became a plot hole. Speaking of, I just found one of the story's main premises - that an attractive 44 year old teacher would just hang out with her students as friends - so totally absurd in a post-Columbine, post-Mary Kay Letourneau world that it brought my blood pressure to unhealthy levels. The story is and is not contemporary, and the characters lack the sensibility or perspective that actually living in the United States in 2004 would have given them. This also relates to #3.
3) Pessl also obviously did NO research on what an academic career actually is or entails. The academic world she portrays is roughly akin to Kafka's portrayal of America in Amerika, written without his ever having gone there, except even the fragments that exist of Amerika represent a masterpiece and Calamity Physics is rotten tripe. Ooh, a metaphor! PAGING MARISHA PESSL, who clearly never took Introduction to Poetic Devices: Way Beyond Similes. Anyway, the premise of an itinerant academic who is still well-respected and published is blatantly absurd, almost fantastic. Oh, you're an adjunct / lecturer who moves multiple times per year? Yet you have a $17,000 desk? Also, people keep HIRING you? I dismissed it for a while under the guise of what we'll call here Magical Realism, as well as the half-assed mystery Pessl sets up in the final fifth of the book, but after a while, the way she played fast and loose with the academy made me so livid I wanted to take this out back and burn it on my pillar of back issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
I wish I could think of something conciliatory to say, but I hated this book. I only finished it because my new thing is finishing all books I start, and it didn't take me years with this one only because I got it from the library. The kindest thing I could possibly say is that Marisha Pessl is punching way above her weight. Unfortunately, she ain't no Nabokov.
The laborious process of reading this book felt like 514 pages of a precocious child shrieking, "Aren't I clever?" into my face, only they were pronouncing clever incorrectly because they were not, in fact, very bright, and also projecting spittle into my face every single time.
With apologies to the late great Roger Ebert, and his masterful take-down of North (1994), "I hated this book. Hated hated hated hated hated this book. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant reader-insulting sentence of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the readers by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.
wilkerwyrm's review against another edition
4.0
This book takes a long time to get started. The event on the book jacket doesn’t occur until part 3 but it makes up for its slow pace with a devilishly unique writing style. I love the references to other works (although some of the websites don’t actually exist which made me sad). I also love the quiz at the end as it gives me hope for Zach who is pure and must be protected.