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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.
[. . .]