Sharp Words

9 out of 10

Marisha Pessl’s debut novel, published in 2006, is the intriguing story of high school student Blue, and of the events surrounding her discovery of her teacher’s apparent suicide. The blurb on the cover gave nods to Donna Tartt’s A Secret History and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides, and although I’m always fairly skeptical of this kind of praise in cover-blurbs, I found myself able to recognise the similarities – and to see the way in which this novel surpasses both in story and complexity.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics initially seems the story of a high-school loner – Blue Van Meer, marked out by her intelligence and the fact that she has spent most of her life on the move. Following the death of Blue’s butterfly-collecting mother in a car accident when Blue was in kindergarten, her father Gareth – a professor of political science – has moved them relentlessly around the United States, each semester spent teaching at a different university. For Blue’s final year in high school, however, they take root in North Carolina, and Blue starts (for the umpteenth time) at a new school, St Gallway.

They are welcomed to the town by one of the teachers at Blue’s school, Hannah Schneider (a name that Blue feels fits the beautiful and enigmatic woman not at all). Blue is drawn by her into a clique of students, each with their own quirks and ambitions, and the way Blue slowly becomes part of the group is very reminiscent of A Secret History. Tragedy strikes in the spring of Blue’s senior year though, when Hannah is found dead. And as Blue tries to find out more about Hannah’s death, her own life slowly unravels in completely unexpected ways as she discovers secrets about her own family.

I suspect Marisha Pessl’s writing style isn’t to everyone’s tastes, but I really enjoyed the way she gave Blue a very distinctive voice. By turns pedantic, whimsical, literary, imaginative and matter-of-fact, Blue tells her story from the vantage point of a year later, but cleverly in such a way that the story’s main twists aren’t given away in the slightest (as can often happen with this style of writing). I can imagine a lot of people getting annoyed with the way Blue gives author and publishing references for books mentioned, but I found it very much in keeping with her character – as was the way ‘visual aids’ (line drawings) are included throughout the text.

Blue and her writer use lots of metaphors and similes and lush descriptions, and employ a lot of nouns as verbs (and possibly vice versa), and again, this style isn’t for everyone. But combined with a very intriguing story that just kept developing in complexity and mystery, it really worked for me.

There are lots of things in this novel to keep the reader guessing – not least the title, which isn’t an obvious one. Nor are the chapter headings of famous literary works, and figuring out how they relate to the content of each chapter is a definite challenge. In some ways, Marisha Pessl could be called over-ambitious with the style and characterisation in this novel. But I really enjoyed it, and I look forward to reading it again with foreknowledge of its twists and turns.