Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“I’m Charles Loren,” he said, as if revealing the secret.
Dad was a devotee of Sturdy Eye Contact, but what Dad never addressed was that staring directly into a person’s eyes was nearly impossible at close range. You had to choose an eye, right or left, or veer back and forth between the two, or simply settle for the spot between the eyes. But I’d always thought that was a sad, vulnerable spot, unkempt of eyebrow and strange of tilt, where David had aimed his stone at Goliath and killed him.
“I know who you are,” he said. “Blue something. Don’t tell me--”
“What on earth is that hubbub in the back there?”
Charles jerked back in his seat. I turned.
A stocky woman with sour orange hair – the same person who’d glowered at Dad shouting Byron when he dropped me off – had replaced Havermeyer on the auditorium stage. Wearing a turnip-pink suit that strained like a weight lifter to remain buttoned, she stared up at me with her arms crossed and legs planted firmly apart resembling Diagram 11.23, “Classis Turkish Warrior during the Second Crusade” in one of Dad’s favorite texts, For the Love of God: History of Religious War and Persecution (Murgg, 1981). And she wasn’t the only one staring. All sound had been sucked out of Love Auditorium. Heads were turned toward me like a troop of Seljuk Turks noticing a lone, unwitting Christian taking a shortcut through their camp on his way to Jerusalem.
“You must be a new student,” she said into the microphone. Her voice sounded like amplified heel scuffs along pavement. “Allow me to let you in on a little secret. What’s your name?”
I hoped it was a figurative question, one I might not be expected to answer, but she was waiting.
“Blue,” I said.
She made a face. “What? What did she say?”
“She said blue,” someone said.
“Blue? Well, Blue, at this school, when people take the stage, we give them the respect they deserve. We pay attention.”
Perhaps I need not point out that I was not accustomed to being stared at, not by an entire school. The Jane Goodall was accustomed to doing all the staring, always in solitude and always from a location of dense foliage, which made her in her khaki shorts and linen blouse virtually indistinguishable from the bamboo canopy. My heart stuttered as I stared back at all the eyes. Slowly, they began to peel off me like eggs on a wall.

Problematická kniha. Rozhodně zajímavá a znám lidi, kteří na ni nedají dopustit. Já si z ní nejvíc pamatuju strach, myslím že jsem se strašně bála, četla jsem ji v první dnech v téhle zemi, vyjančená a přecitlivělá. Vůbec, kniha má strašně zvláštní atmosféru, spíš zlověstnou než cokoli jiného. Je za ní jistě obrovský kus práce, což je právě to, co mě trochu odradilo, působí místy překonstruovaná, příliš snaživá, defenzivní. Navíc se mi na 500 stranách nepodařilo se s dějem dost ztotožnit tak, abych vnímala všechny detaily, což je důležité pro závěrečné rozuzlení. Takže – až ji potkáte, zalistujte, pročtěte pár odstavců a když to bude ono – není co řešit. Taky by vám mohla pomoct nějaká dobrá recenze (záměrně sem na ně odkazy nedávám, ptejte se strýčka Gůgla a oblíbených serverů). Česky vyšla jako Vybrané okruhy z mechaniky pohrom, četla jsem jak českou, tak anglickou verzi, přikláním se víc k originálu (už pro množství jazykových hříček).

Teď zase čtu ty recenze a krom toho, že vám každá druhá vyzradí spoustu tajemství, tak jsou taky jednomyslně kladné. Tak to vidíte.