»Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Marisha Pessl's first novel, helpfully provided with illustrations that underscore the preopossessing mystery surrounding the characters, has echoes of pretension similar to Umberto Eco's fantabulous Foucault's Pendulum, but resonates more closely to Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. Undoubtedly the product of a fervent, well-read pen with ample verve and imagination, the book, like its protagonist, sits uncomfortably in its own smartness, reminiscent also of Donna Tartt's first novel.

Blue van Meer, the protagonist, competes obsessively with her handsome, widowed father in poetry-quoting, pronouncement-making, and other car-tripping episodes as they move from one small third-rate university town to another. A radical professor and writer, her father keeps her at arm's length as they settle in western North Carolina for the majority of the story's action ('action' is exactly the wrong word, for as much of the story happens in Blue's parenthetical citations as in the narrative itself. The text has only three foot-notes, but also several 'Visual Aids', much like the figures of our textbooks). Blue settles in to a cunningly-named clique of elite students at an exclusive prep school, the first at which she has ever spent an entire year.

The book has a few, jarring homophone typos: "stationary" for "stationery", "illicit" for "elicit"; and an irritating use of nouns as verbs: "ivied", "jack-o-lanterned", as though Pessl were too lazy to spin our her similies in full phrases.

As the events of the narrative lead to the tragedy described on the first page, the death of the clique's adult member, the reader senses the unease which comes from standard family and school troubles, the unease of adolescence. But suddenly Blue finds herself in command, and living up to the promise of epic adventure that she spelled out, again on the first page of the book. Pessl's plot and prose are meticulous, and perhaps even under-achieving.