special topics in calamity physics review

The relationship between Blue and her father changes over Blue’s senior year.

What is your opinion of him at the novel’s conclusion? Go back to some passages in the book where Blue hints that he is hiding something, such as when she describes her frightening apprehension, at the age of eleven, that he is a “terrifying, red-faced stranger bearing his dark, moldy soul” (p. Yet there are clues that all is not right with Gareth. He dazzles women, is adored by his students, and is completely committed to his daughter. Her father, Gareth van Meer, is her opposite: charming and callous, verbose and secretive. What did you think of her when we first meet her? How does she change over the course of the novel? At the end, what new characteristics has she acquired? She is quiet, in thrall to her father, bookish, and solitary. It combines the suspense of Hitchcock, the self-parody of Dave Eggers, and the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt with a dazzling intelligence and wit entirely Pessl's own.ĭiscussion Questions from the Publisher's Reading Guide:īlue describes herself as a “Jane Goodall,” an observer not a main actor. Structured around a syllabus for a Great Works of Literature class and containing ironic visual aids (drawn by the author), Pessl's debut novel is complex yet compelling, erudite yet accessible. But when the drowning of one of Hannah's friends and the shocking death of Hannah herself lead to a confluence of mysteries, Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her gimlet-eyed instincts and cultural references to guide-or misguide-her. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, Blue falls in with a charismatic group of friends and their captivating teacher, Hannah Schneider. In her final year of high school at the elite (and unusual) St. After a childhood moving from one academic outpost to another with her father (a man prone to aphorisms and meteoric affairs), Blue is clever, deadpan, and possessed of a vast lexicon of literary, political, philosophical, and scientific knowledge-and is quite the cineaste to boot. Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer. This mesmerizing debut, uncannily uniting the trials of a postmodern upbringing with a murder mystery, heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in literary fiction Q: Is SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS required reading for devotees of inventive new fiction? A: Yes.' A whirling, glittering, multifaceted marvel, delivered in an irrepressibly smart and flamboyant new voice. 'Marisha Pessl's SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS is the most flashily erudite first novel since Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated.

Special topics in calamity physics review