I finally got around to picking up Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, the much-hyped debut novel that the NY Times called one of the ten best books of 2006.
To borrow a phrase from the Powell’s blurb: Topics “uncannily [unites] the trials of a postmodern upbringing with a murder mystery.” The book’s protagonist is the precocious, literate Blue van Meer, a teenager who has just moved to a new town with her larger-than-life father. At her new school, Blue falls in with a group of kids called the Bluebloods, an exclusive little posse united by their friendship with a glamorous teacher, Hannah Schnieder. When Hannah dies under suspicious circumstances, Blue sets out to unravel the mystery of Hannah’s death, with only her book learnin’ to guide her.

Pessl's writing is relentlessly showy—she has trouble getting through a paragraph without digressing into lengthy, free-wheeling descriptive phrases. Topics is also crammed with allusions to real or imagined books, though these are never quite clever or funny enough to justify their interruption of the narrative. Here's a pretty typical example:

Dinner at Hannah's was a honey-bunch tradition, held more or less every Sunday for the past three years. Charles and his friends looked forward to the hours at her house (the address itself, a little enchanting: 100 Willows Road) much in the way New York City's celery-thin heiresses and beetroot B-picture lotharios looked forward to nose-rubbing at the Stork Club certain sweaty Saturday nights in 1943 (see Forget About El Morocco: The Xanadu of the New York Elite, the Stork Club, 1929-1965, Riser, 1981).

I was profoundly irritated by Pessl's writing at first—it struck me as too-glib, superficial despite all the big words. After the first hundred pages, though, I began to forgive her the theatrics. Pessl draws a mean character—Blue, in particular, is wonderful, and in theory I like the idea of a character whose understanding of the world is completely based on books she's read, even if the execution is awkward at times. Buried, too, beneath the bells and whistles are lots of wry, astute details (when a boy tells Blue she is a bad kisser, she "broke down into one of those headachy weeps one would think would be reserved for the death of a family member, for terminal illness, the end of the world"). It's also a little trashy and a lot of fun—the type of book that makes you wish for a beach and a fruity cocktail of some sort. I've got about 100 pages left, but I can't wait to finish it.

Pessl will be at the Cedar Hills Powell's tonight (the paperback version of Topics just came out), and I suspect she'll be an entertaining speaker. She's also, of course, young and super hot. Beaverton seems so, so far away sometimes, but Pessl is kind of a Big Deal, and this reading should be worth the trek.

Marisha Pessl, 7 pm, Powell's at Cedar Hills, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd