"It had been almost a year since I'd found Hannah dead, and I thought I'd managed to erase all traces of that night within myself. I was wrong."
'Special Topics in Calamity Physics' is an erudite and darkly hilarious coming of age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale, told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue Van Meer. Blue is clever, deadpan, and possessed of a vast lexicon of filmic, literary, political, philosophical and scientific knowledge.
After a childhood moving from one academic outpost to another with her father (a man prone to aphorisms and misguided love affairs), Blue settles in with a charismatic group of friends and their captivating teacher, Hannah Schneider. But after Hannah's mysterious death Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her books to guide her.
Structured around a syllabus for a 'Great Works of Literature' class with "Visual Aids , this is a mesmerising debut which unites the trials of a post-modern upbringing with a murder mystery.
