Just returned from a visit to my sister-in-law in West Cork. I'd taken along several of the books I've recently bought and actually made good progress into Housekeeping on the ferry. Her husband, Joe Horgan is an (about to be) published poet and columnist for the Irish Post - I've just tried googling him and there aren't any interesting links. His book comes out later this year so maybe his web presence will blossom then. Anyway. Joe is a book person. His book are organised by theme and then alphabetised. There's a big Irish writers section for instance and, more of interest to me, a pulp, throw away, easy reading section. Here, tucked in next to the Pelecannos novels was Special Topics In Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. The title did it for me - I'm a sucker for this overblown sounding nonsense. It has an American Highschool setting but the story is more Dead Poets' Society than American Pie. Actually that makes it sound shit. The story is narrated by Blue Van Meer who has been brought up by her brilliant university professor father and groomed as a future Nobel laureate. All of Blue's asides and intimations are acknowledged parenthetically by author and title. it takes some of the clichéd ingredients of the setting and turns them into a satisfyingly off beat mix. It also has the sort of elliptical ending which Pessl taunts readers with in her analysis of Antonioni's L'Avventura.

Joe doesn't much like people borrowing his books so I was forced to spend a lot of time trying to get it finished. Still didn't manage and had to steal it. Don't worry; I will post it back with thanks. I finished it last night and went to sleep happy. Momentum in the novel seems to be building towards Blue's discovery of the hung body of one of her teachers (an event mentioned right at the beginning so I'm not spoiling anything) but veers off afterwards in a way which suddenly switches genres. I liked it a lot but it was definitely a very self conscious show-offy kind of read. Whether that’s the result of this being Pessl’s first novel and thus self conscious and show-offy or this is an authentic attempt to capture the narrative voice ultimately didn’t matter: it was great fun.