Reading: Piranesi (156/365)

[white_hart]

Susanna Clarke's second novel, Piranesi, is very different from her first, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Where Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was, famously, extremely long, and interweaves multiple characters' stories together, Piranesi is short, with a very small cast of characters. Like its predecessor, however, Piranesi features detailed, compelling worldbuilding and feels completely original.

The narrator of Piranesi lives alone in the House, a vast complex of stone halls, filled with statues, where the sea washes through the basement and clouds fill the first floor. He believes this to be the entire world; a world with only two living inhabitants the narrator himself and a man he knows only as the Other. (The Other calls the narrator "Piranesi", but the narrator does not believe that this is his name.) As the novel progresses, the narrator begins to uncover clues about his life before he came to the House.

I loved this. The writing is beautiful, the descriptions of the House are wonderfully atmospheric, and I found the gradually unfolding plot compelling. It also felt peculiarly appropriate to be reading a book where living in solitary isolation is such a major theme now, after 14 months of lockdown. It must have been written well before the pandemic, but it felt incredibly timely.

Comments

[hilarita]

I should get hold of a copy and read it, because IIRC it's Hugo-nominated and I have a stoat to cast for it.

[alithea]

I must get around to reading it, I've had a copy sitting on my bookshelf sincd February!

I read an interview and apparently she's been really ill with some sort of mystery ME type illness and spent several years not able to leave the house, so she had prior experience of a lockdown style existence.

[nineveh_uk]

I had no idea Piranesi was short. It makes me much more inclined to read it at the moment. (I have read a couple of longer and literary novels this year, but it's not like what happened to Thomas Cromwell was a surprise. )