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Special Topics in Calamity
Physics
There are stories, and then there are stories`85Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl belongs to the latter category. In her debut novel, she has conquered the difficult terrain of mystery, where even veteran novelists miss the mark. She has handled the story with the deftness of a magician and come up with this literary masterpiece. Blue, the narrator, has led a life that has been plagued with mystery right from the start. Way before she acquired the strange name, the stage was set for lots more to follow. Having led the life of a nomad, always on the move with her father, she hankered for the stability of life that she found in the lives of acquaintances that she acquired along the way. She puts up with all this mostly with compliance and at other times, despite defiance. Her life had in no way been ordinary. Her mother’s untimely death had blemished her chances of a normal childhood and her father’s routine flings did nothing to help. When she finally does find consistency in her life in the form of friends and an enigmatic teacher, her life is once again thrown into turmoil. Her never-say-die spirit and conviction in her beliefs keep her from inevitable doom. Gareth, Blue’s father, was a thinker and instilled in her daughter the very love that he felt for literature, ranging from the political, theoretical, classical to the downright gossip-indulgent. She is completely awed by him and is infatuated with quoting from books that they had read together, he had brought for her or referred to her. Hannah as the enigmatic teacher is every bit as mysterious as Pessl would like us to believe. The premise of the novel is a peek into the reasons of her alleged suicide that the narrator refuses to take at face value. Her inquisitiveness leads her to uncover a truth that had not been accounted for by the coordinator of her life’s story. Pessl’s way of describing and introducing characters is markedly a class apart. She refers to a character’s smile as a dying light bulb and an accent is described as being so thick that you could cut through it and spread it on a dinner roll. She leaves you exasperated and amused at the same time when she leaves a blank space to denote a word that defies definition. There is no dearth of drama either; complete with cues for fade in and fade out. Her illustrations are an added bonus that gives the metaphors an extra edge. It is endearing to know that the writer does not resort to cheap sexual imagery that makes up a large chunk of the content of literature to make the novel more saleable. The final exam leaves you with bits to ponder over. The most interesting of observations that she makes, that reverberates through out the novel, is a quote which states that nothing in life is authentically astonishing, "not even being struck by lightening. A person’s life is nothing more than a series of tip-offs of what’s to come. If we had the brains to notice these clues, we might be able to change our futures." A whodunit par-excellence!
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THE hallmarks of a
riveting mystery don’t let your thoughts wander and make sure that you
keep turning the pages, not allowing you to put it down before you reach
the very end. A sense of euphoria engulfs you and keeps you that way for
at least some time. You can feel the anticipation, the hurt and the
ecstasy of the characters as your own. In short, you are so engrossed
that you live their life as long as you keep turning the pages.