Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
Blue van Meer tells the story of moving around the country with her lecturer father. Her mother died when she was young, so this is the vagabond, over-educated life they lead together. We are supposed to be hooked in because we're dying to know why her high school teacher committed suicide.
Well, it didn't work with me, and I abandoned it after 100 pages. The narrator was so negative and superior, I couldn't stomach it. Her disdain for everyone around her cloaked in vain academic references killed me.
But some good did come of it. Just a few pages in I realized that the over-educated are just another lot of people, no better or worse than anyone else. So sweet release there.
General consensus: Just because it's drowning in references to academic articles, history, and literature doesn't mean it's good. (I suspect it won an award and is heaped with so much praise because so many people didn't want to admit they didn't know what the author was talking about.)
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