Core Curriculum.

Page 157. Special Topics in Calamity Physics is deeply, densely, wonderfully referential. So much so I'm quite certain I am missing a lot more than I am getting. (Visit Book Nerd Corner at the right and click on the "Book Porn" link and take a quick peek at the seventh image down, the piece by Jonathan Callan. One could argue it quite perfectly represents this novel.) Sometimes this awareness of missing out can be terrifying but I feel quite safe in Pessl's hands. She is somehow familiar; a kindred spirit. I understand her brain. Her process. Her insane (but not) leaps. I can follow and do so so willingly.

Already I know this is a novel I will (and must) go back to over and over. Each chapter is named for a classic book and I try to see the connections; the reasons she chose each of them. Some seem obvious but it would be foolish to assume anything this tantalizing writer does is obvious. Layer after layer and endless parenthetical bits of even more information, references, even the occasional "visual aid."

I veer back and forth between thinking too hard about the writer's intentions and being totally engaged in her story. (Details in this book causing such a different type of distraction for me than the disconnected descriptions in What the Body Remembers.) The main character, Blue van Meer, is charming. A brilliant high school student whose only long-term relationship is with her father, she has changed cities, schools and homes throughout her academic life. In order to give her some footing on scholastic terra firma her senior year, Blue's father decides to finally settle them so that she may attend the prestigious St. Gallway School, where she is immediately, mysteriously accepted by the most elite clique. This seems to occur with the unsolicited help of the beautiful film studies teacher, Hannah Schneider, who is about to turn up dead.