A game design company has mysterious forces at play in the new YA thriller 'Darkly'

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Author Marisha Pessl has always loved puzzles and board games. She's intrigued by the feeling of forced companionship that comes from solving a puzzle together. Her new novel, Darkly, follows a teen named Arcadia and six others as they embark on an internship with the renowned game design company Darkly. Working on the mysterious island that houses the Darkly headquarters, they come across mysteries of the company and its owner. In today's episode, Pessl speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about the idea of contained chaos and how the mysteries of the past can unlock the mysteries of the present.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Like maybe some of you, I spent a lot of
0:07.0	those early COVID months playing increasingly complicated board games with my friends. And when those
0:12.8	games got cooking, you can't help but feel wrapped up in the immersive nature of the game
0:17.8	storytelling. That's the feeling today's author is looking for with her novel Darkly.
0:22.6	It's a mystery thriller for teens written by Marisha Pesell.
0:25.8	And in this interview with MPR's Aisha Roscoe, Pesel talks about incorporating archive
0:30.3	material into her novels, letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, that sort of stuff,
0:35.5	to build the world around the mystery at the heart of it all.
0:39.6	But she says she's not trying to compete with games or TikTok or the internet for the attention of young readers.
0:44.7	Instead, she hopes her work is a break from all of that.
0:48.5	That's coming up.
0:50.2	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:54.9	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:59.4	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:01.4	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:05.2	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:08.7	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:14.2	A new novel for teens is like a puzzle, drawing readers in to solve its plot.
1:21.5	The book follows a teen girl, Dia, short for Arcadia, a misfit.
1:26.9	But she's chosen along with six others for a coveted
1:30.6	internship. It's on a creepy island off the English coast at a board game company called
1:36.8	Darkly. The company's famous for games that are equal parts magic and danger and for its founder, an eccentric woman long thought dead.
	...

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