Special Topics in Calamity Physics
I finished Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics last night, which book sounds like some sort of weird collection of boring science essays, but isn't, at all. And I've also found that if you describe it as a "murder mystery," people just look at you kind of funny.
But so this book is to a murder mystery as green tea mochi is to ice cream: it's all sophisticated & scholarly & erudite, but in the end, it's just really good fucking ice cream.
One of my favorite passages:
I looked down at him. He looked like Hamlet. And I'm not talking about the Hamlets enamored with the language, the ones always thinking ahead to the upcoming sword fight or where to stress the line (Get thee to a nunnery, Get thee to a nunnery), not the Hamlet worried about how well his tunic fits or whether he can be heard in the back. I'm talking about the Hamlets who actually start to wonder if they should be, or not be, the ones who are bruised by Life's Elbows, Kidney Punches, Head Butts and Bites on the Ear, the ones who, after the final curtain, can barely speak, eat or take off their stage makeup with cold cream and cotton balls. They go home and do a lot of staring at walls.
From Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics, p. 399
Anyway, I loved it.
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