Published: Sep 2020
Genre: Fantasy Fiction
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Piranesi lives in the House.
Perhaps he always has.
"...I heard the Tides roaring in the Lower Halls and felt the Walls vibrating with the force of what was about to happen."
Piranesi is the long anticipated new release from the bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and I was so excited to get my hands on it! I had it on pre-order and fell upon it ravenously the moment it arrived on my doorstep.
Piranesi is the Beloved Child of the House, a great sweeping labyrinth of endless halls that he knows by heart and walks daily to document, though he has never reached the end of them. The lower halls provide him with food from the seas, the upper with fresh water that rains from the clouds. "The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite."
Piranesi believes he has always occupied the House, and that it had always provided for him as it does now.
The halls are filled with statues and the bones of previous residents, but when it comes to human interaction, Piranesi is restricted to infrequent visits from "the Other" whom he meets with twice a week and reports his recordings of the house. Beyond that he is alone and meticulous in his solitude.
This novel is considerably shorter than its predecessor, but the strange and archaic feeling of the writing and the fantastical element of the genre make it just as intriguing and unusual to read.
The story is told by Piranesi himself though a series of journal entries dated by his own system of naming the years, for example: the eighteenth day of the fifth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls.
In these journals he records everything he sees. He documents information as it's revealed to him, and refers back to past happenings when his memory fails him. The House, it seems, has a way of making you forget. And Piranesi has been a resident within its walls for some time.
The first third of the book, although cryptic and mysterious, is arguably uneventful as Piranesi details the House, the Tides, the statues etc. I can't describe this as an action packed Fantasy Fiction that keeps you desperately turning pages, but rather a curiously paced unveiling of hidden and past truths, and a clever weaving of knowledge and magic.
The fantasy you find in this book is integrated so seamlessly that we feel it is a natural part of the world that we've simply forgotten how to access. An archaic knowledge that we've lost, but can still reach if only we know how.
I enjoyed every word of this book and cannot praise Susanna Clarke's newest creation highly enough.
I recommend you read PIRANESI (2020), but also her previous books JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL (2004) and THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU (2006).
Let me know your thoughts. I hope you're as entranced by Piranesi as I was myself.
Zuzu 🖋
Absolutely love the sound of this book, I'm really intrigued by the whole endless house story. Another one for my list x
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