233:. She starts to attend the St. Gallway School and befriends a group of popular, rich, and mysterious teenagers called the Bluebloods. The Bluebloods are also close friends with the film-studies teacher at St. Gallway, Hannah Schneider, a perplexing woman, who intrigues Blue. After Schneider dies, seemingly by suicide, Blue is left to determine why.
205:, you as the author have to know exactly what’s going on at all times. You have to have a really firm handle on what all of the characters are doing, even if your narrator doesn’t understand. That was really the challenge of this book. And it took two or three drafts to figure that out."
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that "each draft took about a year. It wasn’t so much that I was revising Blue’s voice or the language, but that I wanted to make sure the mystery worked perfectly, that all the twists and turns really worked. Writing from the standpoint of an
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wife (and Blue's mother), never manages to stay at a high school for more than a semester due to constant moving from city to city. During Blue's senior year, however, they settle in the sleepy town of
Stockton,
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While the book is replete with literary and cinematic references, some of these references, like "The Way of the Moth" and "One Night Stand" lead to non-existent sources.
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The book is written in the style of the syllabus for an
English Literature course and includes references as footnotes. The chapters are named after literary works like
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Blue van Meer is a film-obsessed, erudite teenager. She is the daughter of itinerant and arrogant academic Gareth van Meer, who, after the death of his amateur
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The book received many positive reviews and was named one of "The 10 Best Books of 2006" by
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369:"A Conversation with Marisha Pessl, Part II « Kenyon Review Blog"
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reported that a movie version was in the works, to be produced by
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395:"Review: Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl"
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336:Scott Rudin
178:debut novel
576:Categories
534:Review of
516:August 20,
463:August 20,
436:2020-07-08
412:2020-07-08
379:2020-07-08
356:References
344:Ryan Fleck
340:Anna Boden
192:Background
407:0261-3077
328:In 2007,
320:in 2006.
153:813/.6 22
105:Paperback
68:Publisher
182:American
140:62755674
101:Hardback
47:Language
510:Variety
431:NPR.org
331:Variety
249:Othello
184:writer
99:Print (
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112:Pages
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518:2013
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