Marisha Pessl
One of my personality traits is the inability to leave a story unfinished. When it comes to things like work projects, this is a strength since it means projects get finished. When it comes to bad films or books, I suppose it is a weakness. I continue to read a bad book, even though it is not enjoyable or fulfilling, just to get to the end. So here we have the first review of a half-book. I am intentionally not finishing it, with the full support of my bibliophile/librarian/recommender-extraordinaire friend Nora.
Here's the thing. This book is all gimmick. Our storyteller is Blue. She is a senior in high school, travels around with her itinerant professor of a single father, and hasn't spent a full year in a single school for her entire life. Her education comes primarily from her father, who seems to be an arrogant, philosopher/historian type, but whom Blue adores and idolizes. So the gimmick of the text is that every thought that Blue has is footnoted and referenced. This is a cute device, and I was hoping that Pessl would hit it heavy early on to give the reader the idea, and then taper off, banking of the fact that an occasional inline citation would remind us of the personality of the character. But I suppose to her credit, she sticks with the gimmick throughout (the first half at least). Secondly, the story is really about these Breakfast Club like characters in school. The troubled teens that band together in spite of their differences, rallying around the part-time film class teacher as mentor. But I just wasn't that interested in the characters, nor was I patient enough to see them develop. While I don't need there to be action (a la fancy car chase scene), I do need to see progression of character. 300 pages in and I don't see it... or enough of it.
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