Special Topics in Calamity Physics: A-

I can't stop thinking about Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Debut author Marisha Pessl's dense study of murder, adultery, shadowy organizations, and high school clique-politics is quite the unforgettable ride - witty, showy, thrilling, and dark. Its plot is an admittedly far-flung tale but it has a superb anchor in Blue van Meer, the bookish main character. Add to that Pessl's shockingly abundant talent as a writer and what you get is a rare treat; a hefty novel imagined with such lighter-than-air exuberance that its every twist & turn is a new delight, a new treasure, to be discovered in these 500-pages.

Topics starts as Blue recounts to us the time she spent at St. Gallaway's, a glamorous private school, how she came to be there, and what transpired after she arrived. She came in a blue Volvo with her dad, a roving idealist-academic, and set-up preparing to waste away her senior year as any other: being the smartest kid in the room that no one will talk to. Her plans are thwarted though when she meets Hannah Schneider, a teacher at St. Gallaway's, and the catty-charismatic circle of students that surround her. The circle, known as the "Bluebloods", is an uber-exclusive cult of celebrity at the school that Blue, strangely enough, is quickly drawn into.

At their center, the magnetic Hannah - a noir dame whose characterization has an exotic, illustrious appeal - and as the months wear on Blue finds herself one of them and consequently, a school celebrity. Of course the ranks she joins are not quite pleseant company; Jade, the vixon-diva, Charles, the extraordinarily handsome romantic, Nigel, the bespectacled teen pulsing with pathos, Milton, the beefy Southerner, and Leulah, the Rapunzelesque wallflower, each prove themselves to be snarky coiles of acidity and cynicism and yet their charms are immediate - to Blue and the reader.

Yet why is Hannah, a forty-something teacher, socializing with teenagers (no matter how glamorous she may be)? Better still, why do people keep dying around her? And why is it that in occasionally gloomy moods Hannah will hint at dark secrets, a dark past? These are just some of the mysteries that pull our hero inexorably into a web spanning many countries and many years...or maybe not. The sheer roccoco ecstacy with which Pessl piles on the questions - faux confessions here, a red herring there - is in itself a joy but its even better to watch her eyeing the mess she has created at the end of the book, an unfortunate pile-up of too much ??? and not enough !!!, and then with minimum flair, clean it all up in an impossibly logical ribbon with just a hint of red (for flair).

As you can tell, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is an over-stuffed endeavor, filled with too many Big Ideas and not enough Big Answers. And yet, working outside of the mystery mold and settling nicely into coming-of-age stream-of-conscious, the novel is a sparkling success; Blue's introspective wit burns holes in the pages its so wicked smart. And Marisha Pessl's sure-footed conclusion is in itself a small-scale satisfactory feast. Sure the Bluebloods fall occasionally into un-characterized limbo and the sudden shifting gears of the third act will give most readers whip-lash, but there lies a winning (and audacious) seduction at the core of Special Topics in Calamity Physics that promises everything from savage school staff to sudden love scenes, and it delivers...mostly.