Bought this with the $20 credit I won from Powells.com.

I should have made a journal entry on this book weeks ago, when I read it--I've already passed it on to another reader at the April 3 Bangkok Bookcrossers meeting. This was a really good book, and the main character, Blue Van Meer, is a sympathetic and engaging narrator. I loved the allusions and cross-references she makes throughout, not to mention the book title chapter headings. All in all, this novel might best be described as The Secret History meets Prep--good stuff.

What a find! This is one of the best books I have read in a long time..the pace was quick and up-tempo, quirky, and filled with qoutable imagery. Must buy my own copy and pass it on to my daughter, friends, etc.

CAUGHT IN BANGKOK THAILAND

Caught at a Bangkok BookCrossers July 2007 meeting.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This morning I finished reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics. It took me awhile to get into the story with its constant in-text references and allusions to movies. It is the cleverly written, first-person account of Blue Van Meer, which recounts the events of her final year in high school. That summer her, until-then, itinerant professor father announces that they will stay in one town for the entire school year, so she can have a ‘normal’ senior year.

The motherless Blue has been brought up on a diet of old films, literature of all kinds, and lectures by her father, so she constantly interprets her life through that lens. As the story develops, a mystery unfolds involving the school’s intriguing film teacher that Blue, herself, doesn’t work out in its entirety until the very end.

This was a first novel and I wondered, like I did with the incredibly original Night Circus, whether the author would have another book in her. It felt like this story had grown organically for a very long time and how will she follow that feat? So, I was happy to learn that Marisha Pessl recently published a second book. Maybe she’s just a prolifically creative person. I hope so.