4 of 4 members found this review helpful.
“I'm honestly torn -- I wanted to be able to give this book a higher rating, really I did -- but the fact is there's only so much clever I can take. And "clever" began to feel like the point of Pessl's weighty tome less than a quarter of the way through.
I did so love the way she used Major Western Works of Fiction as chapter titles and then married her narrative within said chapters to the themes of those same Works. It was kind of fun to connect the themes, but I will say that I would have found it irritating had I not read a lot of those books and short stories already. As it was, I found myself using Spark Notes online a lot to read about the plots of those books i hadn't read, just so I'd be able to "get" it. Overall, though, that aspect of the book worked for me.
What didn't work was the citations every third paragraph or so (The Elements of Style, Strunk & White, 1935) which, while amusing at first, became irritating (see Blistering Diseases and Dermatological Irritations, Frewer, 1989) in short order. Eventually, I stopped bothering to read them at all.
Pessl also has a mad love of similes, and seeds them liberally into her text, like a farmer with a malfunctioning John Deere spreader. Or a demented Johnny Appleseed, suffering from an undiagnosed case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Or maybe a field of dandelions all gone white at the same time, then buffeted by hurricane force winds. Perhaps I've made my point. It gets OLD after a while, Marisha, and seems more like you're trying to impress the reader with your creative writing skills than trying to paint a vivid word picture for him. It's all style and no substance; more Martha Stewart pretty than Paula Deen scrumptious, if you know what I mean.
And let me say a word or two about the characters here: I could not care less about any of them, with the exception, shockingly, of Jade, whom I found more interesting than all the rest of them put together. The Narrator, Blue (and I actually know a guy whose legal name is "Blue," so I'm not going to quibble over weird name here, although I gotta say, the fact that NO ONE in the entire book has a remotely common name is more than a bit strange. Milton??? C'mon.). . . .Anyway, Blue and her dear ol' dad, Gareth Van Meer, the itinerant professor, seem to think that they are so far above everyone else due to their intellectual "superiority" that it becomes nauseating at times. The fact that dad takes time to denigrate the doctor and nurses who are taking care of Blue in the ER after a traumatic event speaks volumes. Sure, it illuminates Gareths's character a wee bit, but seriously? Pretty sure that wouldn't be my first concern. Me, I'd be grilling my kid about what happened like a short order cook doing up a patty melt in a greasy spoon. Oh, sorry. Apparently I'm vomiting similes now. Who knew it'd be catching?
But I digress. There is so little character development for some of the major characters -- mainly the Bluebloods -- that they aren't even caricatures, they're silhouettes (Oh, God, I can't stop!!!! Help me, please!!! I'm starting to remind myself of Dr. Phil.) Ahem. Anyway, a little secondary character development would have been nice. You'd think that there'd be room for it in FIVE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN PAGES!!!!, no? Blue's character was so far removed from reality that I just couldn't swallow it. Yeah, she's incredibly smart, yeah she's brought up to despise those not as smart as she and dad are (i.e., everyone else on Earth, apparently), but she's supposed to be a teenager, for God's sakes. Where are the hormonal outbursts, where is the lack of good sense, where's the shoving aside of what your conscience tells you you "should" so you can do stupid stuff to fit in?
Well, I could go on. Unlike Pessl, though, I won't. Read it if you're into literary allusion and themes, don't if you like character development and anything related to real life. There's some smart word play and amusing chapter titles, but Special Topics, in the end, is too clever by half.”
