Special Topics in Calamity Physics?

Question

Does anyone have a summary of what happens in the book, Special Topics in Calamity Physics? Or a link to a website that actully explains what happens throughout the book?

Answer 1

Summary:
Marisha Pessl has received wide praise for her first book, which ends up being a murder mystery set in a current-day North Carolina prep school. Critics have been lauding Pessl as a great new literary talent and an author to watch out for.

I found myself wanting to agree with the reviews I had read, but kept finding this book fall just a bit short. In terms of plot, the first 200 or so pages drag on, setting up the characters of Blue Van Meer and her erudite professor father and their constant trek across the American landscape. Blue is a brilliant, well-read young lady, having learned most everything from the passenger seat of her father's car while en route from one college town to another. It isn't until about halfway through the book that action of any true interest takes place. There are mysteries that surround Hannah Schneider, a teacher at the high school Blue attends. We know from the outset that Hannah will be murdered, yet we don't know why, when, where, or by whom. In this way, along with some other similarities, the book resembles "The Secret History" by another young, first-time novelist, Danna Tartt. Yet, the similarities do not extend past this point. One point of difference is that in the case of Tartt's murder, I cared whodunnit.

Another similarity reviewers have cited is "Lolita" by Nabokov, that master of wordplay and language. Indeed, there were portions of Pessl's book that caused me to gasp in awe of the language. In addition to her mastery of noir-style description, Pessl astounds with figurative language and what I like to refer to as "Pesslization" of nouns. In a lesson for my middle school students, I presented these "Pesslized" words and we practiced formulating words like her own. What she does is transform nouns into verbs in such an astounding way that they almost seem like figurative language. My favorite example is the following passage: "The campfire jack-o-lanterned everyone, made them orange, carved certain parts of their faces away, and the sockets around their dark eyes, blazing with light, appeared unusually hollow, as if they'd been further dug out with a spoon" (page 326). I have never been aware of other authors using words quite like this, at least not to the extent that Pessl does, and if nothing else, the beauty and inventiveness of her writing was worth the read.

At times, I found myself flipping the pages madly, engrossed in the language and the suspenseful tale. Once the mystery of the novel begins to unfold, about halfway through, I so wanted the end to play out and reward my perseverance.

In the end, however, the story itself is a bit of a disappointment because it put language before storytelling, rather than a well-crafted balance of the two. Because Blue, our heroine, is such a bibliophile, there is a thread of the western canon strung throughout the book. Chapter titles bear, for instance, the names of major literary works, and Pessl has chosen them carefully to fit some event that occurs in that chapter. Yet, one cannot help but wonder if the chapter titles came before what was in the chapters, with the author cleverly writing a narrative to match the title, like some parlor game for AP English students or MFA candidates. Also, peppered throughout the entire book are parenthetical references to book titles, supposedly works from Blue's mammoth experience. Some are literary, while others are non-fiction texts, and all are plugged into the story to illustrate how much Blue relies on reading to understand the world. The problem with all of this is that, in the end, it appears that this first-time novelist was just trying too hard to be clever. And clever she is! But, for me, cleverness alone will not get me to invest in her next book. I would much prefer convincing, likeable characters involved in a credible story than puppets on a stage to illustrate the author's brilliant, well-read mind.
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Answer 2

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RE:
Special Topics in Calamity Physics?
Does anyone have a summary of what happens in the book, Special Topics in Calamity Physics? Or a link to a website that actully explains what happens throughout the book?

Answer 3

Was asking myself the same question

Answer 4

It depends..