What I Am Reading: "Neverworld Wake" by Marisha Pessl
I did not realize until I finished reading it that Marisha Pessl’s “Neverworld Wake” was intended as a YA novel; but once I did, it made perfect sense. I was first sent to Marisha Pessl for her second novel, “Night Film,” an excellent horror novel. There are some horror elements here as well, but mainly “Neverworld Wake” is a mystery with strong science fiction/fantasy elements.
The novel is set in the (recently very familiar) setting of a privileged school in New England, with the characters made up of a hopelessly quirky band of friends who are reckoning, at a year’s distance, with the death of one of their number. The main character, Beatrice, only joins her former friends at their beachfront mansion in order to learn more about the night Jim, her boyfriend, died. She is helped along by the folds of the universe when their group ceases to experience time in a linear manner, and must relive the same day repeatedly.
The tropes being invoked here are not entirely original, and Pessl makes respectful citations to “Groundhog Day” and other works. The group can only break the time-loop by voting unanimously for one of them to survive the ordeal, with the others dying in a car wreck. After each exhausting the consequence-free playground of a repeated day that only they will remember, they decide that Jim’s death holds the key to breaking their electoral deadlock. Their guide describes how this warped reality is shaped by the combined contents of their minds and souls, and this medley allows them to contrive a way to move to different memories. Martha is obsessed by an underground science fiction novel called “The Dark House at Elsewhere Bend,” by J. C. Gossamer Madwick, which posits time as not a line or a circle, but as “a moving train” where travelers can perilously change cars. I found this to be the most unrealistic aspect of the story: after years of her obsessive study and pursuit of this obscure (fictional) work, Martha must explain it in entirety to her friends. They have never asked her about it, much less read it themselves! My respect for all five characters declined at this point.
Their ability to move through and relive days in time allows them to uncover the mystery through a trial-and-error approach, and I found both this method and the resolution of the mystery itself to be compelling. The ending tends toward preachiness about living life to the fullest, and it intended for students or YAs dealing with change in their own lives; but any reader can (if they so choose) have tales of their own coming of age and loss of innocence invoked.