I have to admit to feeling a pang or two of jealousy when I see an author like Marisha Pessl succeed in getting a book published at a relatively young age In the case of this book, said jealousy has to be watered down a bit by the fact that this is just a very good, very fun, very well-written book. And also by the fact that this was apparently her third try, so in a sense I am still ahead of her in the game because after all, I only have the one failed novel in my desk.
This book concerns a teenaged girl who is recruited into a clique known as the Bluebloods, which meets weekly in events run by the film studies teacher, a woman who seems to be engaging in wholly inappropriate relations with the kids in question. What starts out as kind of a witty book about high-schoolers takes some crazy twists and turns which I don’t want to discuss in *too* much detail but suffice it to say that by the end of the book the protagonist is wondering which side of her life the sky is on. I very much want to read a sequel to this book, myself, but the author appears to have gone in a completely different direction in her next novel (which apparently isn’t coming out until 2013 anyway).
It’s not anything close to a Great Novel. I didn’t believe for a second that these people hanging around with Hannah the film study teacher were 16 year old kids, for instance. They talked much, much more like grad-school future literature professors. Also, the sheer inappropriatenes of Hannah’s behavior is remarked at a little bit but I thought it deserved a bit more attention. Finally, as the book finally metamorphoses from witty “high schooler” story to full-blown thriller, the plot itself gets increasingly absurd. I doubt you’ll be seeing this book included in The Canon any time soon.
That being said, I do have to disagree with the people who reviewed it at the time who thought that it was stylistically lacking. If anything, the book kept me reading it in spite of the overly quirky characters and the aforementioned plot issues because it was just a little bit like reading a paper version of the television show Gilmore Girls. It’s written in a little bit of a jokey manner, with lots and lots of literary allusions, not all of which actually exist (I have the feeling that Pessl is waiting to “fill in the blanks” with these missing works of art in later stories of hers). The allusions and the general precociousness also didn’t detract from the telling of the story the way that, oh, Infinite Jest‘s constant use of footnotes did.* Not all writers have to behave like Hemingway or Raymond Carver. As someone who can tolerate the heavy-handed “dear readers” of Victorian lit, I for one can get behind folks who want to break down the fourth wall a bit less obviously.
So… who to recommend this to? I think it’s a fun read, especially if you’re already pretty well-read on 20th century literature and watched a lot of movies. It’s unlikely to change your life in any way, although by book’s end you might end up feeling a bit paranoid by extension. At the very least, it won’t make you throw the thing across the room.
*I keep going back and forth on whether to review IJ. On the one hand, I did read it, and I don’t have any books I absolutely hated on this list yet. On the other hand, spending even 500 words on that thing seeems like pulling teeth to me. Watch this space, I guess!
A Book A Day, That's All We Ask 