From the jacket: "Blue van Meer; a brainy, deadpan, and preternaturally erudite girl who, after traveling from one remote academic outpost to another with her professor father (see"Gareth van Meer"), has head crammed full of literary, philosophical, and scientific knowledge. (She is also a film buff and can recite pi out to sixy-five decimal places.) When she is sixteen, due to certain nuclear events, her previously dull life is forever transformed.
The Flying Demoiselle: an archaic means of hanging someone, populear in the South between 1829-1860. It is also, in all likelihood, how Hannah Schneider died..."
I picked this book up from the library last week because it sounded interesting. I loved it. It is the story of Blue Van Meer, daughter of a nomadic political science professor. Blue can't help but be a precocious intellectual, after all her father is the academic erudite, Gareth van Meer. Anyway, they end up (coincidentally?) in a small town in the South for her senior year of high school. The film teacher at her new, exclusive school, Hannah Schneider, takes her under her wing. Hannah is a compelling, eerie, fascinating, person. Hannah has a little group of prodigies, all interesting characters, called the Bluebloods who also take Blue under their wing. Anyway, why would a teacher be so interested in a bunch of high school students? Why does she seem so familiar to Blue? What is the big secret Hannah seems to be protecting? Why is Hannah's personality so erratic? What is going on? Blue finds out and it is quite a tale. Blue is the wordy (she can't help it) narrator and her tale is a good one.
1 comment:
I read this book after a group of ladies at the next table in a restaurant were gushing over it.
The best book I'd read in a while: just a really smart, unique mystery. Nothing formulaic about this one.
I highly recommend it.
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