Who Knew???????? Could This Be A Literary Sleeper, Or A Dud????????

                                I had not even an inkling of an idea that Marisha Pessl was coming out with a second novel.  With seven years having passed since her spectacular literary debut, "Special Topics In Calamity Physics," I had resigned myself to Pessl being her generation's Donna Tartt.  Either readers would see a novel from her every decade or so, or she would hang it up here.

                                 Early reviews have indicated Pessl's "sophomore effort" does not live up to her first, but, hell, whose does?  Even though "The Corrections" was not Jonathan Franzen's first novel, it was the one that pushed him over into the national consciousness, so that it almost seemed like a first novel.  And he scored another triumph with "Freedom," which struck me, at the time, as a nigh impossible act.  But, then, he is Jonathan Franzen!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                    I can recall, back in 2006, when everyone was reading 'Special Topics.' Darlings, you simply could not be seen socially, if you hadn't read it.  I found it so compelling, I can recall holing up in a pizza place on West 16th Street, along Seventh Avenue, glued to my seat, refusing to leave until I finished the last 200 pages!  Which I did, at breakneck speed!  Not since Zadie Smith with "White Teeth" (a fuss I, to this day, still do NOT understand!!!!!!!) had any young author been made so much of.

                                      Now people seem to be bashing Pessl for her second effort. No, I have not read it, yet, but, rest assured, girls, I will.  And the word out there may be right.  But I am thinking back to Zadie Smith. After my disappointment with "White Teeth", (which I actually read twice, because I thought maybe I had been wrong, but I was not!!!!) when her second novel, "The Autograph Man," appeared, I poo pooed it!!!!!!!!!  I had no intention of reading it, and never have!  But, then she wrote something called "On Beauty."  I had no interest in that, initially--until I heard it was a redux of one of my favorite books, "Howard's End," by E.M. Forster.  Could Zadie pull that off????????   I have to say she could, and did; "On Beauty" surprised the hell out of me, brought me to respect Smith a great deal more, and was one of the most enjoyable reads I had that year.

                                          "Night Films" could go either way, and I am perfectly well aware of that. But its premise--having to do something with a filmmaker and his daughter's suicide, is intriguing enough to get me to read it!!!!!  Will it be a find?????????   I will have to let you know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                             Meanwhile, I am having so much fun with "Steamboat Gothic!!!!!!!!!" Wait till you hear about THAT one, dolls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!