Title: Piranesi
Author: Susanna Clarke
Year: 2020
Genre: Fantasy
Piranesi lives peacefully in the House, a world with halls upon halls of statues but when messages start to appear for him, who has written them and why?
The book was chosen as my local book shops book club read and I entered the book not knowing anything about it other than it being a fantasy.
The book’s overall plot is quite difficult to explain wihtout giving away spoilers so I will go with the blurb’s decription for this one.
“Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.
Then messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want?
Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous.
The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite”.
The books beginning is probably one of the most mad and bonkers ones that I have read, definitely for a while and I found the first 100 or so pages very disorientating and confusing, which it does become apparent is the authors intention in order to confuse and beguile the reader until the truth slowly comes out.
Whilst I can see Clarke did try to create a fully realised world in these early parts, I did find it quite hard to imagine what she was describing as it seemed to just be a world filled with hall after hall of statues, there is also an upper floor which reaches the clouds and the lower floors which has a sea underneath it. The book does also reference courtyards outside but I really struggled to make sense of the geography of the world which made it then hard for me to enter the world.
I have read on Goodreads and also the endorsements in the book that many people really did enjoy the world that was created but I struggled with this.
The book is entirely written from Piranesi’s perspective as we read his journals across a period of five months and this unreliable narrator technique is used to unravel the plot.
Indeed, the story does eventally turn out to be more of a mystery than a fantasy and I would argue the fantasy also goes more into science fiction and alternate realities rather than actual fantasy in the traditional sense which I did find an interesting concept.
However I did unfortunately work out quite quickly what the big twist was going to be and whilst I did enjoy how Clarke revealed the mystery to the reader and I was defnitely hooked as it unravelled it was ultimately a bit unsatisfying as I had worked it out much earlier what had happened.
Whilst I did find the book entertaining and I would recommend giving the book at least a look in as it is clear it has been widely loved by many readers based on the endorsements, the Goodreads score and that it was Book of the Year in many publications. However it probably for me is a read once type of book, although I can imagine some people will love it.
If you have read this book then I would love to know your thoughts, let me know in the comments down below what you think.
