Jake Weber is an inspired choice to narrate Marisha Pessl’s dark and utterly addictive new novel. He is at home in the noir, able to treat it as if the nightmarish confusion in which protagonist Scott McGrath finds himself is utterly real to him—and to make it real to you. Weber’s pacing is impeccable, his characters distinguished so subtly that you can’t even say how you knew that was, for example, Hopper speaking, but you unfailingly do know. Pessl’s plotting is intricate and gripping as McGrath is helplessly compelled to pursue the truth about the “suicide” of Ashley Cordova, gifted daughter of a maker of cult horror films, who may be just eccentrically private, or maliciously manipulative, or actually demonic. Trust me: You’ll care. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Praise for Special Topics in Calamity Phyiscs
 
“[A] dazzling debut novel.”—USA Today
 
“Exhilarating . . . a poetic act of will.”—The New York Times Book Review (one of the 10 Best Books of the Year)
 
“A whirling, glittering, multifaceted marvel.”—The New York Times
 
“[An] escapist extravaganza.”—Entertainment Weekly (EW Pick)
 
“Dizzyingly ambitious.”—Elle

Jake Weber is an inspired choice to narrate Marisha Pessl’s dark and utterly addictive new novel. He is at home in the noir, able to treat it as if the nightmarish confusion in which protagonist Scott McGrath finds himself is utterly real to him—and to make it real to you. Weber’s pacing is impeccable, his characters distinguished so subtly that you can’t even say how you knew that was, for example, Hopper speaking, but you unfailingly do know. Pessl’s plotting is intricate and gripping as McGrath is helplessly compelled to pursue the truth about the “suicide” of Ashley Cordova, gifted daughter of a maker of cult horror films, who may be just eccentrically private, or maliciously manipulative, or actually demonic. Trust me: You’ll care. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

An inventive--if brooding, strange and creepy--adventure in literary terror. Think Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King meet Guillermo del Toro as channeled by Klaus Kinski. In her sophomore effort, Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics, 2006) hits the scary ground running. Filmmaker Stanislas Cordova has made a specialty of goose bumps for years; as Pessl writes, he's churned out things that keep people from entering dark rooms alone, things about which viewers stay shtum ever after. Cordova himself hasn't granted an interview since 1977, when Rolling Stone published his description of his favorite frame as "sovereign, deadly, perfect." Cordova is thrust back into the limelight when his daughter is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in Chinatown. Scott McGrath, reporter on the way to being washed-up, finds cause for salvation of a kind in the poor young woman's demise. McGrath's history with Cordova stretches back years, and now, it's up to him to find out just how bad this extra-bad version of Hitchcock really is. He finds out, too; as one of the shadowy figures who wanders in and out of these pages remarks, ominously, "Some knowledge, it eats you alive." Oh, yes, it does. Readers will learn a thing or two about psychotropic drugs, to say nothing of the dark side of Manhattan and the still darker side of filmmaking. And speaking of hallucinations, Pessl's book does a good imitation of a multimedia extravaganza, interspersed with faux web pages and images. All it needs is for a voice to croak out "boo" from the binding, and it'd be complete unto itself. A touch too coyly postmodern at times, but a worthwhile entertainment all the same.