Pages: 514
Language: English
Nationality: American
First published: 2006
About Blue van Meer and her father, Gareth; they travel around America where Gareth works at numerous institutions, while Blue goes to school at a new place every minute, it seems. Blue is extremely clever, her father the same, he writes and reads, she mostly reads. They settle in Stockton at the end of the book, and Blue gets a teacher that fascinates her more and more, until the teacher commits suicide. Entailing the suicide, Blue aspires to reveal the causes of her death, suicide or not.
I must say, I have never felt as good after finishing a book as I did after Pessl’s first novel. Usually I’d say something to this effect after reading Dante’s Inferno or Shakespeare’s Othello; works that crave something from their reader, and in return give a most rewarding literary adventure, both pleasing and satisfying. With Pessl, however, I just felt happy. Happy it was finally over.
By some dubbed a page-turner, by others named a clever masterpiece, I beg to differ. The 300 first pages could easily have been omitted, they say nothing, except the facts made relevant by the author herself. Upon picking up the novel in the book shop I was told it would be “A page-turning murder mystery … unputdownable” (The Guardian). From this it seems to me that the people at The Guardian only read the last 150 or so pages, as the teacher “She found [...] dead – hanging by a piece of electrical cord.” (off the back cover, Penguin 2007) failed to be found so before page 336 out of 514.
Apart from being astonishingly long without content, it portrays the author’s persona very well. It is clear Pessl feels she has something to show off, not only from the choices of characters, but also from her language, striving to be clever, rich and eloquent, perhaps like Dickens. Instead she stumbles and falls in between all the words and the entire work is out of touch with it’s attempted aptitude.
I would like to make a recommendation concerning this book. You mustn’t read it. Hopefully Pessl will write something far more fetching in the future, which I am sure will make people, until then unfamiliar with Pessl, happy. I, however, won’t ever touch her work again. The reasons are simple: I was told by numerous, multilingual reviews that this was the most fascinating book of the modern world, it’s clever, original and everything else one can wish for in a book. Lies, lies, lies.
Perhaps not your most developed analysis ever, though I appreciate the reading. Our motto being ‘legible’, after all, I appreciate the non-pretense of it, and as always, the humour. You obviously hating this book, however, and I not having read it, opens little space for a debate, though that may not necessarily be the point.
I read the ‘unputdownable’ quote by The Guardian, I read the book, I read your review…The ‘unputdownable’ part, while partly true, was a little misleading…I didn’t put the book down because I really, really wanted to get to the point where the actual story started. Took me 100’s and 100’s and 100’s of pages to get there, but when it did, I enjoyed it. I am not a snob when it comes to books, I will read anything, I like all genres. There was a book I read, Trading Up by Candace Bushnell, 548 pages of lost time. Time I could have spent reading something decent or playing WoW or going to the gynocologist, just because anything would have been better than reading that book, with characters I absolutely hated. But once I start a book, it must be finished…If you felt the same way about STiCP that I felt about TU, I am sorry for you, very very sorry. I can’t change your mind, but would just like to let your other readers know that not everyone felt so strong a dislike for this book.
I find myself agreeing with what you say; I like reading most genres myself too, and I generally finish whatever I start; though there have been deviances to this rule. I don’t necessarily regret finishing STiCP, it was an insight into current American writing and also valuable as such a acclaimed debut and so forth. However, had I known what I know now, I do believe I wouldn’t have started it, even though it’s good to read a bad book once in a while.