Take all the time you need.

Author : Marisha Pessl
Title: Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Published : 03/05/2007
Pages : 528
Format : Paperback
Publisher : Penguin Books Ltd

     She found her teacher dead - hanging by a piece of electrical cord. The North Carolina police think it was suicide. Her former friends - the Bluebloods - blame her for being there. And her father tells her to leave it alone. But Blue van Meer is a student of books and can't let a mystery go. Because all her life puzzles both complicated and intricate have littered her path - her mother's death in a car crash; a childhood spent roaming from town to town; her dad's serial affairs. Are these fantasies of a teenager too lonely or too clever for her own good? Or has Blue stumbled on something so dark, so devious, that her world is about to be flipped upside down?

    

     The description of this book seemed to change on every site I saw it on. For one it was listed as a coming of age tail. On another a murder mystery being solved by a young girl, and still another a hyper intellectual tale of life. SO what was I to make of it. The edition I have makes it sound much more the murder mystery. Which I guess is what brought me to the book in the first place.

     Pessl presents us with blue a girl who doesn't really seem to fit in to the real world. She has the ability to endless list off quotes from books and films. yet her inability to realise when one of her friends Is play her. she is both frustrating and at the same to very relatable. Blue's only real connection is to her farther. Which as you learn more about the type of person he is speaks a great deal towards the way blue is. Because you end up spending so much time with the characters The writer has created for us, Some 528 page you get to know them. Whilst there world is not on most of us will ever inhabit. That of pricey private boarding school. You will get a sense of how not much matters to the bluebloods. They don't have to deal with consciences so life for them becomes much more streamlined between what they want and having it.

The authors writing style is some what unique to me. She can take you on these massive intellectual tangents whilst dragging in references a mile long to back up her points. The tale she gives us in my opinion is far more a coming of age than anything else. She shows us blues shedding of innocents and her reeling that most adults cant be trusted when push comes to shove. The author dose not give us an easy story this will take time. Normal I can get through a book in a couple of evening. This on not so much. The story in its self can leave you some time wondering where its going at times. She spends a good percentage of the book setting up the relationships between blue, Her farther and the bluebloods. This being an important element in so far as Allowing blue to assign  motive to the people we follow. Marisha has an ability to blend elements from multiple genres of storytelling in to something far greater than its parts. She will also leave you trying to work out the truth of the story as is seems no one can be trusted in their account of what happened not even Blue.

     I real enjoyed this book maybe not in the same way I have others recently. It's the type of book you have to be in the mood for. Some will find the constant referencing of other books to annoying for them to finish the story. That's a fair enough argument to level at it. Whilst it is a murder mystery this is real a small part of what is going on in the book.  You also have to able to devote a bit of time to it. If nothing else just to keep track of what everyone has or maybe hasn't done.