Vous voulez voir cette page en fran�ais ? Cliquez ici.

Quantity:

More Buying Choices

50 used & new from CDN$ 1.71

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Search inside another edition of this book

Special Topics In Calamity Physics (Paperback)

by Marisha Pessl (Author) "Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it ..." (more)

3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

List Price:	CDN$ 18.50
Price:	CDN$ 13.51 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
You Save:	CDN$ 4.99 (27%)
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

Ordering for Christmas? To ensure delivery by December 24 to Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal, choose Express at checkout. Read more about holiday shipping.

15 new from CDN$ 9.19 35 used from CDN$ 1.71

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Eunoia: New edition

by Christian Bok

4.0 out of 5 stars (3) CDN$ 12.37

Et Tu, Babe

by Mark Leyner

4.0 out of 5 stars (24)

The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon

4.2 out of 5 stars (106) CDN$ 12.40

The Book of Salt: A Novel

by Monique Truong

3.8 out of 5 stars (21) CDN$ 13.83

The Savage Detectives: A Novel

by Roberto Bola�o

5.0 out of 5 stars (1) CDN$ 12.41

› Explore similar items

Product Details

Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher: Penguin Paperbacks; 1 edition (April 24 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0143112120
ISBN-13: 978-0143112129
Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14 x 3 cm
Shipping Weight: 499 g

Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #90,049 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Pessl's showy (often too showy) debut novel, littered as it is with literary references and obscure citations, would seem to make an unlikely candidate for a successful audiobook. Yet actor and singer Emily Janice Card (a North Carolina native like the author) has a ball with Pessl's knotty, digressive prose, eating up Pessl's array of voices, impressions and asides like an ice-cream sundae. Card reads as if she is composing the book as she goes along, with a palpable sense of enjoyment present in almost every line reading. Her girlish voice, immature but knowing, is the perfect sound for Pessl's protagonist and narrator Blue van Meer, wise beyond her years even as she stumbles through a disastrous final year of high school. Card brings out the best in Pessl's novel and papers over its weak spots as ably as she can.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From AudioFile

Blue Van Meer writes of the year her life "unstitched like a snagged sweater." This first novel is a hybrid, part coming-of-age story, part murder mystery. But first and foremost, it's a dazzling prose circus, full of hilarious metaphors and studded with footnotes, some real, many invented. Emily Janice Card (daughter of novelist Orson Scott Card) gives a bravura performance. She's an innocent, even foolish teenaged girl with the bookishness of an Oxford don. Card dances through this minefield of a text, never getting lost in a sentence or mispronouncing a word. The absence of the drawings present in the text is noticeable but in no way mars this spirited aural romp. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

See all Product Description

Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.

First Sentence
Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it. Read the first page

Explore More
Concordance

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?

	77% buy the item featured on this page: Special Topics In Calamity Physics 3.5 out of 5 stars (4) CDN$ 13.51
	6% buy Three Cups Of Tea 4.7 out of 5 stars (75) CDN$ 8.25
	6% buy Then We Came to the End: A Novel 3.8 out of 5 stars (5) CDN$ 11.32
	6% buy Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure 3.7 out of 5 stars (3) CDN$ 13.10

Explore similar items

Customer Reviews

4 Reviews

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

3.5 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Stick with it - it's worth it in the end, Mar 6 2007

By	Kelly Rossiter (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Special Topics In Calamity Physics (Hardcover)

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl is a book that I was really looking forward to reading. I loved the character of Blue and her pedantic professor father. I loved Pessl's writing style, her imagery, her language. The love affair lasted until roughly the end of the first third. Then I considered writing to the publishers to suggest that they retitle it Marisha Pessl's Big Book of Similes. By page 200 I was counting the number of similes per page, then by paragraph. This was not a good sign. By page 250 I was ready to throw the book across the room and I was only about half way through it. I get annoyed when authors write very long books when it isn't necessary. I get annoyed when editors don't say "You know this book would be much better minus about 150-200 pages". I start mumbling under my breath about Tolstoy. The centre section of this novel had me thinking that Pessl is a clever writer but more flash than substance with a certain amount of self conscious "look at what I can do" to her. But I thought about how much my son said he loved the book so I plowed onwards. And I'm glad I did. Around the beginning of the final third of the novel Pessl throws in a plot twist (whatever you do, don't read the back of the dust jacket) and the book takes off. Suddenly I was totally engrossed in the story and back in love with our narrator, Blue. The writing became tight and focussed with somewhere to go and something to say. That part of the novel met my expectations.. This is a first novel for Pessl and I'm hoping she will realize that she can write and that she doesn't need to put in every beautiful phrase that has ever come to her. She can save some for her next novel.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a beach read., Jun 15 2007

By	M. Catalano "Have book, will walk into walls." (Toronto) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The other review is bang on. The book starts well, gets you involved in the characters, starts to ramble intellectually and then picks up like a freight train towards the end. The author's literary, film and cultural citation is astounding and awe inspiring. I can only imagine she must have an IQ close to her heroine's purported 175 to have read and internalized all of those references. Alas I am not so smart so many of them were way over my head but it didn't stop me from enjoying the book.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I've ever read, Sep 28 2007

By	Jacquelyn (Coquitlam, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews

This book was FANTASTIC. Yes, as the other reviewers have said, it's very long (a door-stopper of a book), perhaps I even agree with the reviewer who said it could have been trimmed down, but STILL: that doesn't change my opinion. The author's verbal acrobatics are astounding. There were astonishing metaphors and similes everywhere, but I didn't find them annoying, they were amazing. The plot did indeed pick up in the last third of the book, and for two or three days now I have done nothing but sit glued to this book. The New York Times wouldn't have rated it one of the 10 best of the year for nothing. Read it -- you'll never forget it.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 4 customer reviews...

Most recent customer reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
Though I laughed, at times, I soon got irritated by the constant references - mostly fake. The characters are interesting, the plot is good but it is too much of a farce.

Published on Sep 15 2007 by C. W. Exp