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Special Topics In Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl

Special Topics In Calamity Physics reviews


7.9

based on 26 reviews
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based on 25 votes
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Official Publisher Site

One of the most heralded debut novels of the year, "Special Topics" is, among other things, a comedic murder mystery set in an elite North Carolina high school.

Viking, 528 pages
08/03/2006
$25.95

ISBN: 067003777X

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Los Angeles Times Hillary Frey

Anything familiar about this hip, ambitious and imaginative book is easily overshadowed by its many pleasures. The book's real brilliance doesn't become clear until the very end.

Publishers Weekly

A sincere and uniquely twisted look at love, coming of age and identity. [22 May 2006, p.27]

USA Today Olivia Barker

Dazzling...But 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.

LA Weekly Nathan Ihara

It’s edgy, earnest, smart, delicious, moody, melodramatic and, best of all, humble...Pessl skillfully blends high-school hijinks (romantic antics, catty gossip, sex and booze) with tantalizing suspense, and the pages fly by.

The New York Times Janet Maslin

This book’s gradual upward trajectory leads it toward mounting suspense, a hall-of-mirrors finale and a coda that is supremely inspired. In the guise of asking questions, Ms. Pessl resoundingly answers a big one: yes, she knew precisely what she was doing all along.

The New York Times Book Review Liesl Schillinger

This skylarking book will leave readers salivating for more.

The Independent Scarlett Thomas

One of the most astonishing things about this novel is the prose itself, and it is almost alarming that Marisha Pessl is able to sustain the intensity of Blue's narration for over 500 pages.

Salon Laura Miller

Special Topics, for all its overeager freshman infelicities, is a real novel, one of substance and breadth, with an arresting story and that rarest of delights, a great ending.

Daily Telegraph Matt Thorne

The true brilliance of Pessl's début is the way she manages to sneak so many clues right in front of the reader while appearing to be writing a fairly scattershot comedy.

Daily Telegraph Daniel Swift

A terrific novel: funny, sad and self-aware. But if it knowingly alludes to Lolita and Pale Fire, that is only because it also knowingly alludes to everything from Thucydides to Gordon Gekko. Pessl has written a story about the expectations that arise from literary borrowing: she plays with citation, yet is very sincere.

London Review Of Books Joanna Biggs

In fact, it’s fun, and funny. And it’s difficult not to like a main character endowed with one-line-aheadness, who can still ruin a moment so entirely and regularly.

The Onion A.V. Club

Pessl goes a little over the top with her fake literary references, and she sometimes stalls the narrative too long in order to follow dead ends in Blue's love life, or to share Gareth's professional cynicism. But she knows her way around a simile - like "she'd resolved to shake me off like a hit funnybone" - and she knows how to evoke the wrenching feeling of being alternately let into and shut out of a social circle.

The New Yorker

Her mesmeric tale, even at its most over-the-top, feels true to the operatic agonies of adolescence.

New York Observer Regina Marler

A wordy, funny book, crowded with closely observed details and jokey literary references that veer into the kind of brainy silliness you could imagine from postgraduates huffing helium.

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

A 514-page escapist extravaganza packed with literary and pop culture allusions, mischievous characterizations, erotic intrigue, murders, and unstoppable (occasionally unruly) narrative energy.

Boston Globe Caroline Leavitt

It's too clear that Pessl is expertly pulling the strings, which makes the whole world of the novel feel a little too signed, sealed, and delivered for the reader's total satisfaction. But while the structure and plot are familiar, the writing is almost nerve- rackingly original.

Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp

While reading Calamity Physics, hyperawareness of the words sometimes makes it hard to simply sink into the story. Yet that won't prevent readers from marveling at Pessl's inventiveness.

Booklist Michael Cart

Turns into a murder mystery that--although never as Hitchcockian as its publisher claims--is, nevertheless, almost compelling enough to warrant its excessive length. [1 June 2006, p.39]

Kirkus Reviews

The writing is clever, the text rich with subtle literary allusion. But while even the gimmicks work well (chapters are structured like a literature syllabus; hand-drawn visual aids appear throughout), they don't compensate for the fact that "The Secret History" came first. [1 June 2006, p.541]

Village Voice Darren Reidy

But we have to wait some 300 pages for Physics to become a surprisingly seductive thriller. Until then, it's pretty standard coming-of-age stuff of the John Hughes variety.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Kathleen Byrne

Inside Marisha Pessl's fat, funny, first novel is its thin, witty cousin, desperate to get out of clown face and into something a little more . . . soignée. And what else is an editor for?

The Economist

A book to chuckle over and chuck away.

The Independent Wendy Brandmark

The prose can be funny and sharp, but there are too many references; almost every turn of the novel is likened to a character, book, film or essay. She doesn't need to keep pointing out connections.

The Guardian Peter Dempsey

The initially droll bibliographical referencing, there to show Blue's pedantic nature and her father's influence, quickly becomes wearisome, but it is the style that is the novel's biggest failing. Baldly put, Pessl has a tin ear for prose. There is a page-by-page cascade of dreadful extended metaphors and distractingly inappropriate similes.

Washington Post Donna Rifkind

Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

San Francisco Chronicle Ann Cummins

For a murder mystery of this length, I want a little more thrill in the story. Special Topics in Calamity Physics could have used some judicious editing, some attention to scene choreography, and a little more glue to hold the plot together.

The average user rating for this book is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 25 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
A wonderfully fresh voice, great use of language, and frequently funny - yet with a faint poignancy that creeps up on the reader by the end. The teenage narrator is both wise beyond her years and naive, well-travelled and out of her depth, near-adult and typical teenager. Special Topics is a surprisingly quick read: it's not a heavy 500 pages by any means.

Kate M gave it a4:
Over media hyped writer who has sandwiched a 200 page clever yet not very well concluded mystery in 500 pages of pretentious literary references. So great, Marisha -- you've read a plethora of literature. Big deal - most good writers have but to thrown it into your writing to make yourself sound impressive -- how sophmoric and shame on your editor for not cutting most of it out -- a marketing ploy for sure. It is not so much a means of developing Blue's bookish personna as a clever book selling idea to pack it with references to great works in literature -- so that when these names get dropped in book reviews the work sounds more intellectual than it really is. Same with having the main character be a student at Harvard -- ah, the mere mention of this great institution gives the character more merit than she deserves. (Why not have her go to your alma mater instead? -- Barnard not good enough, huh?!!) Using great names and works of literature to beef up a so-so juvenile mystery. And as far as the barebones mystery it falls short of being a good mystery -- it isn't even a good cliffhanger -- the issues left unfinished seem just that -- they are unfinished threads of a story that the author couldn't figure out how to weave into the story -- nice for her though as she has material for a sequil (who'd want to read it.) It isn't believeable to think this doting, overbearing father would just disappear forever because he can't face his daughter for fear of her finding him a sham and that this ingenue at 17 would have the ability to lie around for a couple of weeks and then bingo get herself through the end of high school and enrolled and busy attending the top Ivy League school without a friend in the world. Very stupid if you really think about it. I was hoping to find that in the dark of the mountains Blue had confused the hanging woman to be Hannan but is able to uncover that it isn't Hannah and that she in fact escaped and that somehow with her father she brings this all about and doesn't just disappear from the story altogether. We never find out why after all these years Garaeth decides to live near Hannah either, of why Hannah includes Blue in her group -- is she tweaking Gareth or what? Cop-out ending!!

Marge gave it a9:
I thought it a brilliant first novel. It will be interesting to see what else she can do.

J K gave it a10:
Challenging, jet-coaster prose, probing theme. Brilliant, and one of this year's best!

Mary R gave it an8:
I almost stopped reading it after the first 150 pages. I felt it was a book written by a 20-year-old for other 20-year-olds, not someone in their 50's like me. I'm glad I stayed with it though; I couldn't put it down for the last 200 pages. I admit, sometimes I just skipped over the citations and metaphors.

Richard M gave it a9:
A delightfully witty and intelligent first novel. I await her sophomore effort with high expectations. Highly recommended.

Kathy R gave it a6:
This book, while entertaining, was overrated and overly long.

Special Topics In Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

Special Topics In Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl