I was about one-quarter of the way through this book when I had a strange revelation. It was, basically, kind of formulaic. And yet, the formula was rare and unpredictable. See, several years ago, I read Donna Tartt's The Secret History, a dark book about a group of preciously sophisticated, murderous wacked-out Classics majors at a small liberal arts college. I was captivated. Six months ago I read Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket's) The Basic Eight, about a group of precociously sophisticated, murderous high school students at a San Franscisco high school. I was, again, captivated. And then I read Special Topics In Calamity Physics, about a preciously sophisticated group of prep school kids that get involved in...is it a murder? A suicide? And I thought, is this some sort of new trend in fiction? The secret, murderous high school club? If it is the new trend, I understand why, I suppose. High School can murder anyone's soul, and it's tightly knit cliques that tend to do the most murdering. (I know the Secret History took place at a college. but it was about Classics majors, and they are just plain weird.)
As a literature junkie, I also think I understand why these characters are always precociously smart- because former English majors and literature geeks dream them up, and it's such fun to dream up a character that lets you quote Joyce and Shakespeare nonstop.
So, maybe I couldn't help but take this book with a grain of salt, and maybe the main character seemed just a bit too grown up for her years. But here's the thing- I couldn't stop reading the book. Like, I was obsessively carrying it around, and during the climactic sequence, I just sat there on the bus and didn't even notice I was late to work. So it's got formulaic elements, but the solution to the mystery bears no resemblance to either Daniel Handler or Donna Tartt. And so heroine Blue seems a bit too wise for her years...so does Harry Potter, after all. I'd pick this one up if you like intrigue and don't mind a bit of academia along the way. (Yes, there are references to Joyce and Shakespeare along the way).

A few years ago I read Night Film and quite enjoyed what a cinematic writer Pessl seemed to be. I was not disproven with this novel, her first. I think I liked it much more than Night Film, actually.

At first the constant lit/film references might seem too much. I remember when I first started reading it and sighing when I guessed that perhaps this book was so long because it relied so much on these references padding out the page count. There were times when I needed to read ahead, skipping references so that I could get to the plot. The references slowed down something that could have been rapid-fire twisty plotting.

Perhaps that's what the plot needed, though, because by the end I was in awe of the journey Pessl carved out for her reader (and narrator, Blue). The novel is about Blue van Meer, a girl who moves almost every year of her young life with her father, a professor (totally related to this as a kid that grew up in the Army, btw). She lands in Stockton, NC in her senior year and meets an enigmatic film teacher and a crew of students that worship said teacher. There are a lot of great sequences in the book (Pessl is really great at tension and illustrating a scene like its a film), and so many that felt true to teenage emotions and interactions. There's also a lot that is completely and totally not reality-based (including some of the references, I might add, that I tried looking up on Goodreads only to find no such book existed - that made me laugh out loud). Anyway, the academia coming-of-age send-up you thought you were reading becomes something quite different by book's end and I was completely in love with it in the final chapters.

Highly recommend for patient readers who like surprise endings. Even with the surprises in the end, I feel like I'll come back to this book in a year or two to read again.

If one removes the cloying similes, repetitive metaphors, irritatingly "clever" literary references, and witty pop culture banter one is left with a pile of stock caricatures tangled up in tired overused plot devices. That being said, the NYT loved it. Salon liked it. The Christian Science Monitor was very kind. I myself feel as though I have spent the past three days drinking sticky sweet Rusty Nails with great gusto only to wake up with the worst hangover of my life.

A Frankenstein's monster of fast and furious factoids. A homemade goulash of parlor romance, teen coming of age, and Agatha Christie. Think Jeopardy! meets Degrassi High. Think Gilmore Girls meets Trivial Pursuit. Think some other low culture thing meets some sort of high culture thing, but whatever you're thinking, think fast.

Our narrator is a girl named Blue, and if you want to assign some symbolic meaning to that, go ahead - consider it the Lit Crit equivalent of a BINGO free space. She has a mind like a steel trap, bouncing gaily from reference to reference with nary a pause or a look behind to see how they've been landing. She's bright and breezy and quick but her pattering is like a pirouetting dance around something unpleasant and dark. She seems like a friendlier DFW and this book like a less aggressive Infinite Jest, covering some similar territory viz. mental health, family dysfunction, and academia, launching volleys of well-read and clever allusion but without the heavy patronizing "keep up if you can" vibes.

3 stars. Some will say it's too long, or too tiresome, and they will have a point, but I say it's still an enjoyable read for fans of higher education, big important books, and overthinking.

Book about a college student Blue Van Meer who having lost her mother in a car accident very young travels around from town to town with her father – a popular and distinguished college political science professor who prefers to work in more obscure colleges.

For her final year they settle down to a rich preparatory school in a small North Carolina mountain town called Stockton.

Blue is drawn in to a group of hated and feared students “The Bluebloods” who gather around an enigmatic film teacher – Hannah Schneider (who we learn in the first chapter hangs herself).

Hannah herself met Blue and her father when they came to the town and mysteriously seems to insist on Hannah’s inclusion in the group. Hannah herself leads a mysterious life: she collects missing person stories; her past seems mysterious; the Bluebloods spy on her nocturnal outings which seem to involve picking up men in rough bars; they gate crash a costume party at which one of her guests drowns in a swimming pool (seemingly from the effects of medicine and alcohol).

The book is modelled as a literary course with an introduction, each chapter named after a real book (as though a reading course syllabus) the title (or sometimes plot) of which is linked more or less closely to the plot of the chapter and a closing examination setting out the various issues the reader is already considering.

The writing is extremely pretentious – Blue seems to view life as a series of comparisons to or quotes from (real or imaginary) works of literature and art.

The book is nevertheless very enjoyable – and I read it in a single airline journey.

The first 2/3rds read a lot like “Secret History” suddenly changing to a bizarre conspiracy theory type book, initially you feel that Blue is imagining things but more and more plot items and little details come into line and seemingly gives credence to her imaginings.

Donna Tartt wrote a splendid book called The Secret History which both celebrated and skewered hyper-intellectualism as well as explored the process of interacting with a text and the pleasures of narrative devices. This book follows roughly the same storyline (and, incidentally, the storyline of Daniel Handler's The Basic Eight, down to the "study questions" at the end), except there's absolutely no reason for the precious chapter titles and the annotated references - they have no bearing on the story itself and the general effect is talking with someone who's read a lot of books and hasn't understood a damn one of them.

The irritating dialogue is more reminiscent of chick lit than of anything spoken in real life or in the realm of drama, and the narrator is utterly divorced from the grand intellectual she is supposed to be (again: see The Secret History for an excellent depiction of young scholars). No one has any sort of believable emotional reaction to anything, because no one has any discernable personality traits. Charles, Camilla, and Frances wander over from Tartt's novel to halfheartedly play roles as Charles, Leulah (really!) and Nigel, and then get bored and leave after the story inexplicably becomes a murder mystery. The only possible killer is so obviously telegraphed from early on that all of Blue's supermarket-paperback-mystery "sleuthing" is enragingly tiresome. Also, there's some sort of limp romantic subplot that I guess we're supposed to care about.

So where The Secret History is a brilliant story of the delights and dangers of text and narrative and a wrenching depiction of a classical sort of madnesss, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is the same book shat out and frosted with irritatingly perky metaphors and the worst dialogue I've seen outside of a Harlequin pulper. If you want to read this book and aren't a fan of Donna Tartt, just read The Basic Eight, which is shorter and more entertaining.

This is a unique book in that you really won’t understand the point of anything until you finish.

Non lo acclamerei un capolavoro imperdibile. È una storia accattivante, ma alquanto prolissa. Mi sembra che Marisha Pessl abbia tentato di copiare la storia e le dinamiche dei personaggi di Dio di illusioni, ma il tentativo è fallito, a mio avviso: la qualità della scrittura non è minimamente paragonabile a quella di Donna Tartt e la caratterizzazione dei personaggi è assente. Avrei tagliato tranquillamente 200/300 pagine di digressioni inutili, che interrompono la trama (e che sono funzionali solo a far vedere quanto è coltivata la scrittrice) e costringono a fare slalom fra i paragrafi, se si vuole leggere fluidamente la vicenda, senza perdere il filo. La fine mi ha delusa un po’, lascia troppe domande senza risposta.
Nel complesso il libro non mi è dispiaciuto, non mi pento di averlo letto, ma ha troppi difetti.

Special Topics in Mixed Feelings. Report from the Gifted & Talented program: there was much brilliance on display in the novel in question. My report from detention: some qualities of it irritated the hell out of me and one glaring structural element weakened it.

The premise: A genius high schooler is being dragged by her widowed, genius college-professor father from small college town to small college town and transferring from school to school. Said genius high schooler (one Blue van Meer) lands her senior year--with likely prospects of Harvard--in an elite private high school where she is drawn into the spoiled richie-rich cream-of-the-crop clique of the school. Oddly, the clique is guided (mentored) by a woman they worship, a beautiful young teacher who shouldn't be partying with her students but does.

It's rather like Gossip Girl at a MENSA meeting. Or Oscar Wilde in Mean Girls.

Many of the characters are quite cruel (and witty in their cruelty), and although Blue is the wallflower of the group, she is just as clever if not more so (although only in her thoughts) and just as cruel. I felt sympathy for her initially because she was so reserved compared to the others and much less spoiled. However, at a certain point, I started to feel she was just as heartless and judgmental as the rest, and the wit began to wear a bit thin. Much of the book is not very generous in spirit, if you will. Pessl has a sharp eye for human attributes that should be mocked. Admittedly there is a turning point at the very end wherein Blue reveals a bit more generosity of spirit, but it doesn't make up for the extended exhaustion. Even the dumb high schoolers seem to be masters of pointed viciousness, which rings rather false. Not every teenager can be as clever as the scriptwriters for Heathers. I found Blue's father, the professor, particularly grating. He was, I suppose, like the ultimate arrogant intellectual who always insists on his rightness and looks down on almost all others. He was an intellectual bully (an Alpha Dog of the Intelligentsia) who insists on his rightness and mocks any who disagree. It would appear his daughter inherited quite a bit of that attitude. Many of his spoken pronouncements felt like they had been written down in an essay rather than naturalistically spoken. At many points, I felt characters said things that were so cleverly stated that they were unnatural and artificial. I wasn't reading about a real "character" I was reading the cleverness of the writing (the author's cleverness). And for the most part, she gets away with it because it is damn smart. But after a while the witty cruelty started to get irritating. I became a little bored with it because although it maintained a fairly consistent high level of cleverness...it maintained a fairly consistent high level of cleverness. It was like listening to my favorite comedian...for 10 hours. Yes, he's damn funny. But after a while, his style isn't surprising any more and his jokes get repetitive. At times, the style was too mannered, almost precious.

I started the book truly enamored by the intelligence and humor on display but by the halfway point, I started to feel...shouldn't this be ending soon? The book was about 1/2 too long. And there is a reason for that as well: the book is really bifurcated into two stories. It begins as a comedy of teen manners, but then it unexpectedly morphs into a mystery-suspense novel. I won't spoil the turn of events, but I must point out that really it was like two different books knotted together in the middle, and this turn bothered me. The "mystery" situation is quite clever as well, and I was drawn rushing toward the conclusion to discover the solution. But what started as a character study transformed in the second half to something signicantly plot driven. I wanted to know the solution to the mystery ... just to know it. Not because I was concerned about the characters involved. It was in pursuit of answers to the clues.

The mystery half of the book is exceedingly convoluted. And I fear if you pull at it too much, some strings come unravelled. A few big holes for me were [THESE ARE FAIRLY MAJOR SO DON'T READ IF YOU WANT TO READ THIS BOOK.] How come none of the teens had cellphones throughout the entire novel? Was it because Pessl had to figure out why none of the teens brought cellphones on their camping trip? That rang quite false. This novel wasn't set in the 90s, every teen has a cellphone especially rich ones and it's not like there's no reception in the woods. It also seemed like bullshit that Blue wouldn't notice her father not actually working at colleges as they criss-crossed the country. Kids, especially smart ones, notice everything going on with their parents at an early age, and I do not believe he could have fooled her by faking employment at so many places. A woman with a daughter commits suicide because her husband had an affair? Very unlikely. Although that might not be a hole, it might actually be disinformation...perhaps Blue's dad actually killed his wife, but that possibility is never discussed. I did enjoy the mystery piece of the book to some extent, but at the same time it kept nagging at me that I was suddenly reading a different book. I had lost interest in the characters.

I'd note too that the book includes sketches of characters from the book by the author positioned as if the narrator had drawn them. The sketches didn't really add anything to the narrative overall, and as such contributed to my feeling that they demonstrated cleverness for cleverness sake. I suppose their purpose is to make the book have more of a "textbook" feeling to it, with "visual aids." However, as they were far too sparse to really live up to that purpose, they instead seemed arbitrary. And as the novel shifted into mystery mode, the drawings became less frequent. A similar element of the book that seemed to me to be shoe-horned was titling each chapter with the name of a work of classic literature. It reminded me of an author who mentioned Proust repeatedly to add credibility to his own writing. In this case, I could only find very surface level reasons why each of the titles was associated with the book in question. For example, a chapter entitled Moby-Dick related to a single-minded pursuit. The relationship between the work of classic literature (as best as I could determine because I had only read about 1/4 of them), and the given chapter seemed so surface level that it ended up having the effect of name-dropping rather than providing any profound critical intertextuality.

This is the kind of book I'd recommend to a friend just for the sheer wit, but it's like recommending a new brand of fruit-flavored vodka. Tastes great at first, then becomes too overbearingly sweet or fruity, and eventually leaves you with a headache.

Life is, rather confusingly, both sad and funny at the same time

How Marisha Pessl's book works
The close interest of an adult individual in people of much younger age indicates a lack of sincerity, and perhaps not quite sane.
I don't know if there really is a sociologist Donald Mcmeiter, to whom the heroine -narrator attributes the phrase rendered in the epigraph. I suspect not. It is also wrong in meaning, in relation to real life, discredits the very meaning of the institution of mentoring, which is based on the close mutual interest of the teacher and students. After all, no one has canceled that nine out of ten respondents call a favorite, a subject taught by an interesting teacher.

But that's in life. Mainstream literature is subject to other laws and the appearance in the book of a charismatic teacher, adored by students, attentive to them. interested in them, it makes sense to consider as a wake-up call and a signal to be alert. There are even two of them in Marisha Pessl's book - the better for the reader, it will be twice as interesting.

It is strange that five years ago, at the beginning of 2017, when the book was published in a brilliant translation by Maya Lahuti and everyone who is someone spoke about it, not stopped by even more than a solid, eight-hundred-page volume - it is strange that it passed me by. However, as for "read", I suspect that most of those who spoke completely failed. This also explains the number of negative assessments - to be angry at something you can't understand and to scold is something, part of human nature.

And yet, what kind of book is "Some questions of the theory of catastrophes", how does it work, what offends some readers so much? Very briefly: the story of a girl, together with her father, a professor, traveling around the towns where dad lectures at colleges on the topic of settling the consequences of armed conflicts, not staying anywhere for more than three months. Before graduation, her father announces that in this crucial year she will graduate, for a change, from the only school.

The heroine's name is Xin * not in the sense of "something Chinese, but in the sense of "blue". That's what her mother called her, who died in an accident when the baby was five years old. Since then, he and his father have been traveling around America. No, Dad didn't get married, but that doesn't mean there weren't any women in his life. Even in huge numbers, he is still a charismatic Chrysostom (and women, as you remember, love with their ears). To all these victims of Dad's eloquence, Xin assigns the status of "June bugs" - annoying insects that fly into the light of the lamp.

In a new town, this one also gets started, however, it does not work out for Sini to get to know her personally. Because, for the first time in her life, she found herself accepted into the company of high school students, whom everyone here calls Aristocrats: Prince Charming Charlie, Beautiful Jade, the Girl Lula, the Miniature Clever Nigel, the Giant Milton. Of course, not just like that, but with the filing of the most beautiful woman of all who met in her life, the teacher of an optional course in the history of cinema, Hannah, who for some reason was imbued with tenderness, care and a desire to take care of Sini.

Actually, the aristocrats make up Hannah's personal guard. On Sundays, the company gathers at her house. Young people eat exotic dishes prepared by her, talk about various topics and try in every possible way to impress their beautiful patroness. The rest of the time they also constantly communicate with each other. Amicably, there are no love affairs within the five, although Charles seems to be. in love with Hannah. However, Xin falls in love with Milton, realizing that this attraction is more of a hormonal nature (the daughter of the scientist's father, who instilled in her the ability to think logically).

Such an exposition. Then a lot of things will happen: a middle-class girl will be initiated as a member of an elite company, someone will die, someone will betray, and almost everything will turn out not to be what it seemed. And the conditional "winners" will remain with solid emotional wounds, the scars from which do not resolve so easily. As befits a good mainstream novel. Which I will not retell, but I will tell you about the sources and components.

So, first of all, Nabokov: a man and a girl, separated by their otherness from conventional simpletons, travel around America without stopping anywhere, a solid layer of things transported by them is a collection of butterflies. Of course, there is no sexual subtext, but Nabokov's connotations are clearly read.

The second is Francoise Sagan: a little "Do you love Brahms?", partly "A little sun in cold water", a lot of "Hello, sadness" in terms of the relationship of a playboy father and a growing daughter, calmly accepting momentary dad's connections, but not ready for something to seriously change in their lives. The third is "Colorless Tskuru Tazaki" by Haruki Murakami in terms of unexpected incomprehensible ostracism from friends.

The fourth and most obvious component is the "Secret History of Donna Tartt": aristocrats, a passionate mentor, a trip to the wilderness, during which something happens. And in general, the atmosphere of an intellectual novel. Because "Some questions of the theory of catastrophes" the book is a charade, an embodied literary game. The title of each chapter is a book more or less well-known, and the events, in turn, correlate with the content of the "source". For the sake of interest, I counted how many of the thirty-six mentioned I had read or at least heard about them, it turned out to be a modest 23, less than two-thirds.

Without setting a goal to mentally suppress the reader, Pessl unwittingly acts in this role, especially considering the number of footnotes and comments that make up a fifth of the total volume of the book. The great work of the translator, who carefully attributed the book deserves respect. However, here the main advice to tom is thinking about taking up reading, but he cannot decide - do not hesitate, you will not have to constantly dive into the comments, most of the references are read intuitively, and the language of the book and translation is remarkably good.

To summarize: a luxurious novel for a somewhat more prepared reader than the one at the initial level.

Как устроена книга Мариши Пессл
Пристальный интерес взрослого индивида к людям значительно младшего возраста свидетельствует о недостатке искренности, а возможно, и о не вполне здравом рассудке.
Не знаю, существует ли на самом деле социолог Дональд Макмейтер, которому героиня -рассказчица приписывает фразу, вынесенную в эпиграф. Подозреваю, что нет. Она и по смыслу неверна, применительно к настоящей жизни, дискредитирует самый смысл института наставничества, в основе которого именно пристальный взаимный интерес педагога и учеников. Никто ведь не отменял, что девять из десяти опрошенных называют любимым, предмет, который ведет интересный учитель.

Но то в жизни. Литература мейнстрима подчиняется другим законам и появление в книге харизматичного преподавателя, обожаемого учениками, внимательного к ним. интересующегося ими, имеет смысл рассматривать как тревожный звонок и сигнал насторожиться. В книге Мариши Пессл таких даже двое - тем лучше для читателя, будет вдвое интереснее.

Странно, что пять лет назад, в начале 2017, когда книга вышла в блистательном переводе Майи Лахути и все, кто есть кто-то высказались по ее поводу, не остановленные даже более, чем солидным, восьмисотстраничным объемом - странно, что прошла мимо меня. Впрочем, что касается "прочесть", подозреваю - полностью большая часть высказавшихся ниасилила. Это же объясняет и количество негативных оценок - злиться на то, чего не можешь понять и ругать это что-то, часть человеческой природы.

И все-таки, что за книга "Некоторые вопросы теории катастроф", как она устроена, чем так обижает некоторых читателей? Очень коротко: история девочки, вместе с отцом-профессором колесящей по городкам, где папа читает в колледжах лекции на темы улаживания последствий вооруженных конфликтов, больше трех месяцев нигде не задерживаясь. Перед выпускным классом отец объявляет, что в этот решающий год она закончит, для разнообразия, единственную школу.

Героиню зовут Синь *не в смысле "что-то китайское, а в смысле "синева". Так назвала ее мама, которая погибла в аварии, когда малышке было пять лет. С тех пор они с отцом и колесят по Америке. Нет, папа не женился, но это не значит, что женщин в его жизни не было. Даже в громадном количестве, он тот еще харизматичный златоуст (а женщины, как вы помните, любят ушами). Всем этим жертвам папиного красноречия Синь присваивает статус "июньских букашек" - назойливых насекомых, которые летят на свет лампы.

В новом городке такая тоже заводится, впрочем, познакомиться с ней лично у Сини не получается. Потому что, впервые в жизни, она оказалась принятой в компанию старшеклассников, которых все здесь называют Аристократами: Прекрасный Принц Чарли, Красавица Джейд, Девочка-Оторва Лула , Миниатюрный Умник Найджел, Громадина Мильтон. Разумеется, не просто так, а с подачи самой прекрасной женщины из всех, какие встречались в ее жизни, преподавательницы факультативного курса истории кино Ханны, которая отчего-то прониклась к Сини нежностью, заботой и стремлением опекать.

Собственно, аристократы составляют личную гвардию Ханны. По воскресеньям компания собирается у нее дома. Молодые люди едят приготовленные ею экзотические блюда, говорят на разные темы и всячески стараются произвести впечатление на свою прекрасную покровительницу. В остальное время они тоже постоянно общаются между собой. Дружески, любовных связей внутри пятерки нет, хотя Чарльз, похоже. влюблен в Ханну. Впрочем, Синь влюбляется в Мильтона, отдавая себе отчет, что это влечение скорее гормонального свойства (дочь папы ученого, привившего ей умение логически мыслить).

Такая экспозиция. Дальше много всего случится: девочка-середнячок пройдет инициацию как член элитной компании, кое-кто умрет, кое-кто предаст, и почти все окажется не таким, каким представлялось. А условные "победители" останутся с солидными душевными ранами, шрамы от которых так просто не рассасываются. Как и положено хорошему мейнстримному роману. Пересказывать которого я не буду, но об источниках и составных частях расскажу.

Итак, в первую очередь Набоков: мужчина и девочка, отделенные своей инаковостью от условных простецов, колесят по Америке, нигде не задерживаясь, солидный пласт перевозимых ими вещей составляет коллекция бабочек. Разумеется, никакого сексуального подтекста, но набоковские коннотации считываются четко.

Вторая Франсуаза Саган: немного "Любите ли вы Брамса?", отчасти "Немного солнца в холодной воде", очень много "Здравствуй, грусть" в части отношений плейбоя-отца и взрослеющей дочери, спокойно принимающей мимолетные связи папы, но не готовой к тому, что в их жизни что-то серьезно изменится. Третья "Бесцветный Цкуру Тадзаки" Харуки Мураками в части неожиданного непонятного остракизма со стороны друзей.

Четвертая, и самая явная составляющая - "Тайная история" Донны Тартт": аристократы, пассионарный наставник, поход в лесную глушь, во время которого что-то происходит. И в целом атмосфера интеллектуального романа. Потому что "Некоторые вопросы теории катастроф" книга-шарада, воплощенная литературная игра. Название каждой главы - книга, более или менее известная, а события, в свою очередь, коррелируют с содержанием "источника". Ради интереса я посчитала, сколько из тридцати шести помянутых читала или хотя бы слышала о них, оказалось скромных 23, меньше двух третей.

Не ставя цели ментально подавить читателя, Пессл невольно выступает в этой роли, особенно учитывая количество сносок и комментариев, составляющих пятую часть от общего объема книги. Огромная работа переводчицы, тщательно аттрибутировавшей книгу заслухивает уважения. Однако тут главный совет тому думает взяться за чтение, но не может решиться - не сомневайтесь, постоянно нырять в комментарии не придется, большинство отсылок считывается интуитивно, а язык книги и перевода замечательно хорош.

Резюмируя: роскошный роман для несколько более подготовленного, чем находящийся на начальном уровне, читателя.

Couldn't finish it. Tries to tell the story of a special girl who may not be so special trying to fit in with a special teacher and special group of kids who may not be as special either. Murder mystery, peer pressure, and an odd international angle. Eh.