Special Topics in Calamity Physics

American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury
Time management improvements

A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Let us help kick start your New Year's Resolution with some new fitness equipment.
Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change
Time management improvements

A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Easy Healthy Tips
My Secret: A PostSecret Book

How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster

You're Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation
Blog of Good Improvements

It's a shame that some readers might overlook this book as just another entry into the super-saturated and rarely enlightening field of creativity. Using quotes and examples drawn from the origins of well known - and even life-altering - ideas, creations and inventions, Jack Foster has crafted an educational, entertaining and inspirational book. He gets right to the point, makes you laugh and never descends to the level of psychobabble. He is aided and abetted by illustrator Larry Corby. We recommend this book to all readers - Even if you aren't transformed into an idea fountain, you'll enjoy yourself, and probably learn something.
Right Healthy Tips
I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster

Rolling Stone : Magazine
Magnetic clasps - Clever Clasp.

It's a shame that some readers might overlook this book as just another entry into the super-saturated and rarely enlightening field of creativity. Using quotes and examples drawn from the origins of well known - and even life-altering - ideas, creations and inventions, Jack Foster has crafted an educational, entertaining and inspirational book. He gets right to the point, makes you laugh and never descends to the level of psychobabble. He is aided and abetted by illustrator Larry Corby. We recommend this book to all readers - Even if you aren't transformed into an idea fountain, you'll enjoy yourself, and probably learn something.
Parents save where you can - get $500 in Pampers or Huggies.
Letter to a Christian Nation

How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster

You're Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation
Time management improvements

It's a shame that some readers might overlook this book as just another entry into the super-saturated and rarely enlightening field of creativity. Using quotes and examples drawn from the origins of well known - and even life-altering - ideas, creations and inventions, Jack Foster has crafted an educational, entertaining and inspirational book. He gets right to the point, makes you laugh and never descends to the level of psychobabble. He is aided and abetted by illustrator Larry Corby. We recommend this book to all readers - Even if you aren't transformed into an idea fountain, you'll enjoy yourself, and probably learn something.
Good Diet's Tips
Stumbling on Happiness

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

The Stolen Child: A Novel
Which Shampoo do you prefer?

A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Stop Weight Now
From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava

How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster

Ultrametabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss
Internet improvements

It's a shame that some readers might overlook this book as just another entry into the super-saturated and rarely enlightening field of creativity. Using quotes and examples drawn from the origins of well known - and even life-altering - ideas, creations and inventions, Jack Foster has crafted an educational, entertaining and inspirational book. He gets right to the point, makes you laugh and never descends to the level of psychobabble. He is aided and abetted by illustrator Larry Corby. We recommend this book to all readers - Even if you aren't transformed into an idea fountain, you'll enjoy yourself, and probably learn something.
Good Diet's Recipes
300 by Frank Miller, Lynn Varley

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Jane Dyer
Distance Education Helps You Get Ahead.

A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Daily Healthy Tips And Secrets
Untapped Riches: Never Pay Off Your Mortgage--and Other Surprising Secrets for Building Wealth

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

My Secret: A PostSecret Book
Stop Weight Now

A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68
I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence
Letter to a Christian Nation

How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster

I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence
Sephora Pure Beauty Bath and Body Works Participate now and get your $500 Visa Gift Card.

It's a shame that some readers might overlook this book as just another entry into the super-saturated and rarely enlightening field of creativity. Using quotes and examples drawn from the origins of well known - and even life-altering - ideas, creations and inventions, Jack Foster has crafted an educational, entertaining and inspirational book. He gets right to the point, makes you laugh and never descends to the level of psychobabble. He is aided and abetted by illustrator Larry Corby. We recommend this book to all readers - Even if you aren't transformed into an idea fountain, you'll enjoy yourself, and probably learn something.
Healthy Tips For Every Day
Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

The Brooklyn Follies: A Novel
CanadianMedsWorld.com

A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Ultrametabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss
Bird Songs
Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams
http://eat-healthy-every-day.blogspot.com/

A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
The Lovely Bones
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How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster

http://eat-healthy-every-day.blogspot.com/

It's a shame that some readers might overlook this book as just another entry into the super-saturated and rarely enlightening field of creativity. Using quotes and examples drawn from the origins of well known - and even life-altering - ideas, creations and inventions, Jack Foster has crafted an educational, entertaining and inspirational book. He gets right to the point, makes you laugh and never descends to the level of psychobabble. He is aided and abetted by illustrator Larry Corby. We recommend this book to all readers - Even if you aren't transformed into an idea fountain, you'll enjoy yourself, and probably learn something.
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http://eat-healthy-every-day.blogspot.com/

It's a shame that some readers might overlook this book as just another entry into the super-saturated and rarely enlightening field of creativity. Using quotes and examples drawn from the origins of well known - and even life-altering - ideas, creations and inventions, Jack Foster has crafted an educational, entertaining and inspirational book. He gets right to the point, makes you laugh and never descends to the level of psychobabble. He is aided and abetted by illustrator Larry Corby. We recommend this book to all readers - Even if you aren't transformed into an idea fountain, you'll enjoy yourself, and probably learn something.
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It's a shame that some readers might overlook this book as just another entry into the super-saturated and rarely enlightening field of creativity. Using quotes and examples drawn from the origins of well known - and even life-altering - ideas, creations and inventions, Jack Foster has crafted an educational, entertaining and inspirational book. He gets right to the point, makes you laugh and never descends to the level of psychobabble. He is aided and abetted by illustrator Larry Corby. We recommend this book to all readers - Even if you aren't transformed into an idea fountain, you'll enjoy yourself, and probably learn something.
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A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
High school entrepreneur program teaches students link between learning and lifeLocal man cleaning up with invention
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Ad firm with a first -- but will it whiff by mixing cookies, Muni?

A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
GoogleCash - The Pros And Cons Of GoogleCash Like Business ModelSome things beat a hefty paycheck
Sewing success

How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster

Jamie Foxx-LL Cool J & Bitchisms(stand up comedy)

It's a shame that some readers might overlook this book as just another entry into the super-saturated and rarely enlightening field of creativity. Using quotes and examples drawn from the origins of well known - and even life-altering - ideas, creations and inventions, Jack Foster has crafted an educational, entertaining and inspirational book. He gets right to the point, makes you laugh and never descends to the level of psychobabble. He is aided and abetted by illustrator Larry Corby. We recommend this book to all readers - Even if you aren't transformed into an idea fountain, you'll enjoy yourself, and probably learn something.
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Telecommute. Kill a career?

A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Vanity Fair : MagazineFor beginner bloger
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A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture. Studded with ingenious wordplay and recondite allusions, their story veers between highbrow comedy and lowbrow tragedy as it careens toward a couple of ambiguous murders and some crafty detective work.

Ten points if you identified this as the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Extra credit if you also recognize it (minus the pedophilia) as the plot of a much-ballyhooed first novel by Marisha Pessl, who tackles the art of fiction by vigorously associating everything in her book with something else. Constructing the novel as if it were the core curriculum for a literature survey course, complete with a final exam, Pessl gives each chapter the title of a classic literary work to which the episode's events have a sly connection: Chapter 6, "Brave New World," describes the first day of a new school year, while in Chapter 11, "Moby-Dick," a large man drowns in a swimming pool.

Along the way, there are thousands of references to books and movies both real and imagined, as well as an assortment of pen-and-ink drawings. The book's young narrator, Blue van Meer, has fiercely embraced her father's didactic advice: "Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and, where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids." Blue's cross-referencing mania can be surprisingly enjoyable, because Pessl is a vivacious writer who's figured out how to be brainy without being pedantic. Like her protagonist, she's eager to make good use of the many books she's read and the movies she's seen. And she loves similes like a fat kid loves cake (Blue would annotate this properly as a line borrowed from the rapper 50 Cent), never settling for one per page when three or eight will do.

But hunkering down for 514 pages of frantic literary exhibitionism turns into a weary business for the reader, who after much patient effort deserves to feel something stronger than appreciation for a lot of clever name-dropping and a rush of metaphors.

As a Harvard freshman recounting the events of the previous year, when her childhood "unstitched like a snagged sweater," Blue remembers being thoroughly in thrall to her father, a political science professor who changes jobs at third-tier colleges so frequently that by age 16 she's attended 24 different schools. To compensate for this rootlessness (her lepidopterist mom died in a car crash when Blue was 5), Dad has promised his daughter an undisturbed senior year in the North Carolina mountain town of Stockton, where Blue will attend the ultra-preppy St. Gallway School.

It's at St. Gallway that Blue's dedication to her pompous, theory-spouting father begins to waver. Her attention is diverted by the school's most glamorous figures, a clique of five flighty kids called the Bluebloods who meet every Sunday night for dinner at the home of their mentor, Hannah Schneider, a charismatic film teacher.

Blue is miraculously granted admission into this rarefied society, but the reader is not so lucky, having to settle for the novel's customary blizzard of comparisons instead of real characterization.

Most enigmatic of all is Hannah, who's both a concerned mother hen and a shady blur of evasions and secrets, and who may or may not be having an affair with (a) one of her students; (b) Blue's father; (c) random elderly men whom she picks up at seedy diners. Blue makes it clear in the book's first chapter that later in the school year, Hannah will be found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the final third of the book charts Blue's efforts to prove that the teacher did not commit suicide, as the coroner concluded, but was murdered.

Like Hannah, Pessl herself is something of an expert at evasion, nimbly avoiding scenes that might require emotional delineation, hiding behind this Nabokovian sentence structure or that Hitchcockian plot twist, always equipped to defend each dodge with the tacit reproach that, hey, it's only a high-school murder mystery, lighten up. Yet here and there the author betrays glimpses of sensitivity, in Blue's genuine expressions of grief for the early loss of her mother and in this moving evocation of loneliness, framed (of course) in a simile: "To the far-off tune of the blue Volvo driving away, it slipped over me, sadness, deadness, like a sheet over summer furniture."

These briefly poignant moments are enough to make a reader wish for more, for a book that is less about other books and more about life. Having already aced the test of novel-writing as a literary trivia game, the real work for Pessl begins now, if she dares to stop making glib comparisons and starts to stare directly at things, as only she can describe them.

Reviewed by Donna Rifkind
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
The ONE Thing That Separates the Men from the Boys in the Google AdWords GameHigh school entrepreneur program teaches students link between learning and life
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