A review by sarahetc
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

2.0

I was told that I would love this book, or hate it, and I think I come down closer to hate than love, though hate is pretty strong. It's an interesting narrative, but the narrator, one Miss Blue Van Meer, is annoying as all get out. She's supposed to be a massively over-educated, under-socialized high school senior / college freshman, so maybe she's just wonderfully precisely written, but I consistently wanted to tell her to just get on with it, stop parenthetically referencing things, and/or shut up already. The novel is 3/4 local color and navel gazing, then 1/4 oh-yeah-there-was-a-mystery. I held out hope for actual physics references, too, but no dice; just a lot of self-important references to a multi-culti version of the Western Canon, as if to prepare us for an AP exam. Pass unless you must know what all the fuss is about.