Reading from Home Rerun: Marie’s Reading: “Special Topics in Calamity Physics” by Marisha Pessl

Special Topics in Calamity Physics is one of those novels that asks you to think, to go back over the Introduction once you’ve finished, to look for new clues and new meanings in chapter headings and lines of dialogue.

It’s the sort of novel that immerses the reader in a world of eccentric academics, esoteric reading material, and Big Ideas.

It’s the kind of novel that features a narrator with such a strong voice that your speech patterns and writing style are influenced for days after you finish it.

The story is a simple one: Blue Van Meer lives with her father, a brilliant professor.  They move from town to town as her dad switches teaching jobs.  Finally they land in North Carolina, and Blue begins her senior year of high school at the elite St. Gallway School.  Soon enough, the brilliant but lonely Blue falls in with a group of students called the Blue Bloods, who meet every weekend at the home of Hannah Schneider, one of their teachers.  For a while it’s all very Dead Poets Society…until two deaths occur and Blue finds herself having to unravel a very complicated mystery.

I find myself at a bit of a loss to describe this novel.  It’s part coming of age, part high school drama novel, part experimental, part satire, part mystery.  A fun and heady mix, to be sure, filled with allusion and playful prose.

There’s some fun playing with form, as well–Blue, influenced by her brilliant father, offers sketched “visual aids” and many parenthetical citations to aid in her storytelling.   There’s even a Final Exam at the end that serves as an epilogue.  We’re pretty much on our own to fill in the blanks of the story and figure things out.

I will say that at some points the narrative really drags.   This is not a novel with a clear story arc, suspense, or any real resolution.  This is, instead, a novel that explores the character and influences of Blue Van Meer.  Luckily for us she’s a fun character to read, and there are truly some great one-liners and turns of phrase.

Lastly, I’ll say that I love the father-daughter relationship that makes up the true emotional core of this story.  The sweet moments between Gareth and Blue really are lovely, and make a great counterpoint to the deadpan intellectualism and shallow relationships of the rest of the characters.

Readalikes:

I was immediately reminded of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History as soon as I read the description of this book.  If you enjoy the set-up of Calamity Physics, then it might be worth a look.   The Secret History also features an elite group of students involved in mysterious deaths, and is also a mix of satire and mystery with plenty of literary allusion thrown in.  Think a slightly Gothic Dead Poets Society.

I also thought of Rebecca Makai’s The Borrower as I was reading.  Blue reminded me a bit of the ever so slightly revolutionary librarian narrator of that novel.  It’s another story of slightly eccentric characters in a weird situation (in this instance a pseudo-kidnapping and road-trip), with a touching relationship at its center–but this time it’s between a young boy and the librarian.  (Here’s a link to my review of The Borrower)

If you enjoy the overall tone, bookish references, and the clever playing with format, you might try Book: A Novel by Robert Grudin. It’s a satiric look at college life and publishing, particularly about professors and career academics, with a murder mystery thrown in just for fun.  Oh, and at one point there is an entirely separate story playing out in the footnotes.  It’s a fun, quirky read with a unique style and many, many allusions.

Mark Dunn’s Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters (also subtitled as A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable, which gives you a good idea of the playing with form aspect of the novel) is a lot of fun for those who like wordplay and satire, as well coming of age stories wherein young people must solve problems and fight for expression.

–Marie

This post originally appeared on the blog on January 28, 2012

Marie’s Reading: “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk

What gorgeous, lyrical writing!  Toss in a delightfully eccentric and unreliable narrator and you’ve got an absorbing read.

Janina lives alone in a remote Polish village.  She’s a winter caretaker for the seasonal homes of summer people.  Most of her time is spent working on her astrology, and teaching village kids English.  She is passionate about Animals and their rights, and she has few friends.

Then, one by one, influential men in her neighborhood start dying under mysterious circumstances.  One thing they all have in common is that they’re all hunters.  Janina is convinced that their deaths are revenge visited by Animals.  She’s already got a reputation as the local crazy lady (there are some inferences about something that might have happened connected to dogs she used to have), and when she starts trying to convince the local police that Animals are responsible, her reputation gets worse.

There are some truly beautiful passages, these descriptions are so evocative and detailed.  There’s a lot of allusion, too, particularly to William Blake.It’s a dark story, but it’s also blackly funny.  And, truly, it’s hard not to agree with Janina’s sharp criticisms of the way our world is, and how we treat Animals and each other.

This is one to try if you liked Diane Setterfield’s atmospheric books, Sara Baume’s Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither or  Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, 

–Marie

Marie’s Reading: “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens

In 1969, local golden boy Chase Andrews is found dead in the marsh outside Barkley Cove, North Carolina.  Immediately the locals suspect Kya Clark, who is known as the “Marsh Girl.”  As the investigation into Chase’s death occurs in the present, the narrative also explores Kya’s childhood and the experiences that led to her solitary life in the marsh.

Owens’ writing is so wonderfully evocative.  She writes of the North Carolina marshes and coast with such love and admiration for its beauty and creatures.  Even the human beings who inhabit it, set apart from the rest of the community, command a sort of respect and mystery.  There’s a great sense of the small-town and all of its characters and history, too.

Kya is a resourceful, tough person–you’d have to be, after being abandoned in the swamp as a very young kid.  But she finds beauty and hope and fulfillment in her solitary life.  Less solitary, of course, after she becomes friends with a local boy named Tate, who teaches her to read, and then later, when she becomes acquainted with Chase Andrews.  And from there, it’s a “did she or didn’t she” mystery as far as Kya’s role in Chase’s death.

There’s a real sense of magic to this story of a tough rural girl’s coming of age, and the lengths she’ll go to to keep herself safe. The stand-out part of the novel is the perfect sense of place and the depiction of Kya’s life out in the wild, where the crawdads sing.

–Marie

Marie’s Reading: “My Lovely Wife” by Samantha Downing

Our unnamed narrator and his beautiful wife, Millicent, have found a great way to spice up their 15-year marriage: they murder young women and then devise ways to get away with it.

The couple has a nice house in the Florida suburbs.  He’s a tennis pro, she’s a realtor.  They have a son and a daughter.  And both Millicent and her husband are stone cold in their own ways.  Yet, since we’re in the husband’s head the whole time and hearing the story from his point of view, his necessary charm and ease come across really well, and you see why he’s so good at his half of what he and his wife are up to.

I don’t want to give away too much of this plot, because so much depends on surprises and twists and turns.  I was enthralled the whole way through, and, as I said, the narrator is great–totally absorbing and convincing, and oh so charming, so good at appearing sympathetic.   And so twisted.

The dynamic of their marriage is a fascinating one to read about.  The husband projects so much onto Millicent, makes her into an almost other-worldly creature rather than a human woman, that you are left wondering what she’s really like.  It’s another nice, unsettling touch to an already unreliable narrator.

The pace of this thriller is fantastic.  It’s compelling all the way through, rockets through the last third, and the ending is a punch.  Downing keeps up the suspense and never bogs the story down.  Every detail is well-placed and the writing itself is very evocative, filled with mounting tension.  There’s some great family detail as well, though, and some well-placed black humor.  It’s not gory or explicit, either.

If you like Gillian Flynn’s books, give this one a try!

–Marie

Marie’s Reading “The Witch Elm” by Tana French

After being beaten nearly to death in a robbery, Toby heads to Ivy House, the old family manse, where his uncle Hugo is dying of brain cancer.  Toby’s always considered himself a very fortunate guy, until the attack and his less than full recovery afterward.  While he’s trying to heal at Ivy House as well as care for his uncle, a human skull is found in an elm tree on the property.

Of course a whole skeleton follows, which brings the detectives calling.  Whose body is it?  How did it get there?  Toby, caring for Hugo and not having the greatest memory after the attack, tries to answer these questions as best he can–both for himself and for the detective who seems to have Toby on the list of suspects.

French’s writing is lavishly detailed and so finely wrought you want to savor every sentence.  The story is atmospheric and compelling, and the characters are all well-developed and authentic.  There’s still an element of crime fiction in this stand-alone, but it takes a backseat to a story of identity and family.  It’s also fun to see the other side of the usual stories French writes, which focus on the detectives of the Dublin Murder Squad and their investigations. Here we’re with Toby the whole time as he tries to piece together his recollections and make sense of the present.

I really enjoyed the relationship between Toby and his cousins, Leon and Susanna.  They grew up together, almost like siblings, and their bond is clear, in all its complexity and history.  A lot of their relationship relies on memory now, and memory is a big theme in the novel–how people experience and thus remember things very differently, including relationships.

If you enjoyed French’s Dublin Murder Squad series, definitely check this one out–it’s not a crime novel, as I said, so you might miss that, but everything else great about French’s work is on display here.  Fans of Gillian Flynn and Kate Atkinson who haven’t tried French yet certainly should as well.

–Marie

Marie’s Reading: “The Cuckoo’s Calling” by Robert Galbraith

I’m late to the party here, but I’m glad I finally gave the Cormoran Strike books a try!  I just finished the first in the series, The Cuckoo’s Calling.

This novel introduces us to Cormoran Strike, a wounded veteran turned private detective.  He’s just broken up with is girlfriend and is living in his office, which he can already barely afford.  He’s also got a temporary secretary named Robin, whose services he also cannot afford.

Strike takes the case of Lula Landry, a supermodel who fell to her death from her balcony months earlier.  Her brother is convinced it was murder, and wants Strike to prove it.  Soon the detective and Robin are drawn into the world of celebrity and wealth, where digging up the truth turns out to be exceedingly difficult.

I love Galbraith’s use of language.  The names all have an almost Dickensian ring to them, and the descriptions are clever and evocative.  The settings are very richly described, too–the world-building of London and of Strike’s dingy little office are both great.  Given the subjects of fame and celebrity, there’s a lot of social commentary going on here as well, and it works as another level to the investigation.

Strike is a fun character.  He’s very much the damaged PI type, with a difficult childhood, personal trauma, and relationship problems.  Yet he also comes across as a decent, intelligent, and generally kind man who is dogged in  his pursuit of the truth.  Robin, playing a Girl Friday kind of role, is also great–she’s torn between her disapproving fiance and her love of the excitement of solving a crime.  She proves herself very talented at sleuthing, too.  The partnership that builds between Strike and Robin is very nicely portrayed, and they make a great team.

The Cuckoo’s Calling is fun, compelling, and a great crime story filled with multiple layers and entertaining characters.  I’m looking forward to reading the rest!  If you like Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels, you might like these, too.

–Marie

P.S.
Robert Galbraith is J.K. Rowling. Just in case anyone hadn’t heard that yet.

 

Marie’s Reading Thrillers: “Tips for Living” and “The Lying Game”

I always want to read thrillers and suspense in late winter.  It’s a great time of year to hunker down with books, and something about the cold and dark lends itself to darker stories.  I’ve been reading a lot of Minette Walters, as well as re-visiting Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad books.

Here are two thrillers that got me through some dark and snowy afternoons recently!

In Tips for Living, Nora has finally gotten her life back on track after her husband’s affair and their subsequent divorce.  But then her ex-husband and his new wife move into Nora’s adopted small town.  Shortly thereafter, the two are found murdered in their home.  Even worse, Nora is a sleepwalker suffering a relapse, and cannot remember her whereabouts on the night of the murders.  Nora has to clear her name while all the while wondering if, in fact, she did commit the crime.

As a bonus, I think anyone who lives in a small community with a large summer population will totally understand a lot of the snarkiness displayed in the newspaper article subplot of the book (the “Tips for Living” of the title).  There’s great small-town atmosphere, that sense of community that’s sometimes claustrophobic and insular.

Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game is less of a who-dun-it mystery than Tips for Living, and more of a thriller with many layers of deception.  It’s about four friends who have been hiding a secret for years, only to have it come back to bite them.  The scene-setting is great and the characters are interesting–Ware has a talent for atmosphere and dialogue.  If you like Paula Hawkins and S.J. Watson, you might like Ware’s books.

Though I enjoy whiling away winter afternoons with thrillers, I’m definitely looking forward to springtime and being able to read them with more sunshine and an open window!

–Marie

Marie’s Reading: “Burntown” by Jennifer McMahon

Jennifer McMahon’s latest, Burntown, feels like a return to her classic form after The Winter People  and The Night Sister.  It’s an intricate mystery with just the hint of the supernatural around the edges, filled with well-drawn characters and well-crafted scenes.  And the writing is compelling as ever.

This time, the supernatural comes in the form of speaking to the dead and having visions.  The reality of both, in the narrative, is taken as a matter of course–but the reader can decide how much the characters themselves inform what they believe they see and hear.

The story is this:  Eva’s father is professor named Miles, who as a child witnessed his mother’s murder.  He is an inventor who builds a machine which can supposedly allow people to talk to the dead, based on plans smuggled out of Thomas Edison’s laboratory.  One night there’s a terrible storm and flood, and only Eva and her mother escape alive.  But from there the two of them live on the streets.  Eva doesn’t remember anything about what happened to her father and her brother, Errol.  After her mother’s apparent suicide, Eva is left alone.  And then, in a series of violent ways, her mysterious past starts to catch up with her.

Two other characters’ paths cross with Eva’s eventually.  There’s Theo, a high school senior who has been selling drugs to please her girlfriend.  There’s also Pru, the overweight cafeteria worker at Theo’s school who has dreams of the circus.  Those are the primary players, but there’s a web of relationships in this Vermont town.  The intricacies of their relationships and the unexpected ways they all connect and influence each other is nicely done.

The setting, a down-on-its-heels mill town in Vermont (those on the street call it “Burntown”), feels very realistic if you’re familiar with broken-down mill towns in northern New England.  McMahon sets many of her novels in Vermont, and she’s got a gift for painting a picture of the landscapes and people, both good and bad.  There’s a very strong atmosphere and sense of place in her books.  In Burntown, you always have the feel of being in a ruin, in the underbelly.  Sometimes literally, as when the story focuses on a group of women who live under a bridge and claim to have visions.

I always enjoy the people in McMahon’s books, particularly their motivations.  She can craft characters who seem very real, whose desires and impulses and secrets ring true.  In this story I particularly enjoyed Pru, with her outsize fantasies and her happy ending.

The ending to Burntown, if not entirely happy, is at least hopeful.  It ends with a wonderful image that, to me, summed up the book very well.  The climax and reveal of the mystery wasn’t a huge twist or anything, but it rang true.  But then, this is more a story of the strange than it is a thriller, so it works.

If you’ve read and enjoyed McMahon’s books in the past, definitely check this out.   And I’m always reminded of Sarah Waters when I read McMahon’s work.  If you like Burntown, you might enjoy The Night Watch, for the intricate relationships between characters and the setting, London during the Blitz, as well as the compelling writing and great characters.

–Marie

Not-So-Horrific-Horror: “Security” by Gina Wohlsdorf

Okay, that’s a lie.  It’s pretty horrific for a thriller.  I’m talking blood, slashers, more blood, chase scenes, Michael Myers costumes, and yet more blood.  But it’s not straight-up Horror so I’m putting in the Not-So-Horrific category.

It’s also a quick, compelling read, so you might even finish it before the big day tomorrow!

Manderley, an expensive luxury hotel, is in the final stages of preparation before its grand opening.  Several employees are inside the building.  There’s also an unexpected early guest–a knife-wielding murderer who takes out the employees one by one.  And all the while, a mysterious first-person narrator is watching everything on Manderley’s state of the art security system.

It’s a very complex book stylistically–the formatting of a page will sometimes reflect all of the many things going on in different cameras, to different characters.  Black humor and a love story play out against the gory backdrop.

Really, I’m not kidding you.  Gory.  Blood in the elevators, bodies in the bathtubs, bits  of employee strewn around various rooms.  But even so, the characters are wonderful and the story is so compelling you get past it.

The narrator is revealed slowly over the course of the story.  As the story unfolds and you learn more about the narrator and his background, as well as his present circumstances, you realize how elegant and original the “twist” is.

Enjoy, and see you tomorrow, pals!  I’m putting candy out again this year, so come on down to the library!

–Marie