With every book, I always establish a set of parameters and then I make everyone adhere to what’s going on, so this just felt like an extra layer of that structure. I actually didn’t consider it to be that much of a departure from my other novels even though technically it is in terms of the genre. I always knew I wanted to write in the young adult space, but I didn’t know the how or the when or what would happen until this story came into my head.īeyond just being five friends from prep school trapped in a mansion, there’s also a bit of the supernatural going on. And at the time, I was very much interested in the brain and the consciousness and what’s real and what isn’t, so I definitely started going down this rabbit hole of trapping them and having them stuck in a way that went beyond anything Agatha Christie ever came up with. I was working on my next adult novel, and I had this little germ of an idea about these five teenagers who used to be friends coming together in a sort of Agatha Christie-style, claustrophobic mansion type setting where they’re stuck. Did you set out to write a book that fit that mold? First of all, it’s geared toward young adults, but it also has a bit of a fantasy element. This book is different from what you’ve written before. Here, Pessl talks to T&C about creating Neverworld’s dark and disturbing world, how it’s different than the books she’s written before, and why prep school makes for a decidedly terrifying setting.

Set among a group of boarding school friends-or former friends a classmate’s untimely death has made things a bit awkward-in tony Watch Hill, Rhode Island, the book explores what can happen when you have every opportunity to learn the truth, but doing so can be fatal. Her latest effort, Neverworld Wake, might be geared toward a younger audience that either of her first two books but it has all the hallmarks that made both so remarkable. Her next novel, the brainy, delectable horror-tinged Night Film delved into the secrets of a world-famous filmmaker after the mysterious death of his daughter and cemented Pessl’s reputation as not only a masterful novelist but a stylish one to boot.

The book, which followed a young girl maneuvering an erudite, perhaps dangerous high-school experience, won literary prizes and became a New York Times bestseller. When Marisha Pessl released her first novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, in 2004, it put her on the map as one of the most exciting authors working in fiction.

Marisha pessl neverworld