Core Curriculum 

SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS 
By Marisha Pessl. 

Illustrated. 514 pp. Viking. $25.95. 
Review by LIESL SCHILLINGER
Published: August 13, 2006

Whoever coined the phrase “everybody loves a winner” probably wasn’t one. 
When the news came out that a distractingly pretty actress, playwright and 
Barnard College graduate named Marisha Pessl, only 27, had sold her first 
book (which she also illustrated) — a “Nabokovian” thriller about an 
intellectual widower and his precocious daughter — for a substantial sum, 
the pick-a-little, talk-a-little publishing blog brigade went into 
conniptions. “She’s the latest in a long, long line to suffer from ‘Hot 
Young Author Chick’ Syndrome,” one blogger grumbled; another wrote in a 
headline, “It’s Not About Marisha Pessl’s Looks and Money — Is It?” and 
asked if the book would have been snapped up so quickly if Pessl hadn’t 
had such a “drool-worthy author photo.” But don’t hate her because she’s 
beautiful: her talent and originality would draw wolf whistles if she were 
an 86-year-old hunchbacked troll. And in Pessl’s case, Nabokovian doesn’t 
need scare quotes. Her exhilarating synthesis of the classic and the 
modern, frivolity and fate — “Pnin” meets “The O.C.” — is a poetic act of 
will. Never mind jealous detractors: virtuosity is its own reward. And 
this skylarking book will leave readers salivating for more.

[. . .]

Search the Nabokv-L archive at UCSB

Contact the Editors

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

Visit Zembla

View Nabokv-L Policies