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rachelmanija Feb. 4th, 2021 11:19 am)
rachelmanija Feb. 4th, 2021 11:19 am)The narrator of Piranesi lives in an immense structure which he calls the House. It is full of statues. Its lower halls are underwater, washed by tides; its upper halls are in the clouds. It is visited by birds. Its only inhabitants seem to be the narrator and a man who he calls The Other.
That is all I knew going into the book, and I had an absolutely wonderful time learning the rest as I went along. I recommend doing the same.
The narrator is one of my all-time favorite characters, an explorer and a scientist and a philosopher, at once deeply naive and extremely intelligent. But most of all, he is kind. I have rarely loved a protagonist so much.
At one point he finds a pair of albatrosses building a nest, and knows that they will need more dried seaweed to construct it. He has some, which he needs to make a fire for himself, but gives it to them, reasoning:
What is a few days of feeling cold compared to a new albatross in the world?
Piranesi is a book filled with beauty and wonder and understated horror, kindness and cruelty and the search for knowledge. It's often very funny, and, to my complete surprise, also quite suspenseful. For a book in which most of the action is the narrator wandering around a structure, it's also extremely narratively compelling. For me, anyway.
While listening, I was very torn between listening slowly, to fully enjoy every sentence, and all at once, because I was dying to see what will happen. It blows my mind that a Susanna Clarke book is this suspenseful as much as I love her, everything else I've read by her was leisurely to say the least. This is leisurely in a good way, AND has narrative drive.
It's a book almost designed to appeal to me specifically in some ways; I love stories which are about exploration and learning and observing nature and getting to know a fascinating place intimately, and a lot of the book is about that. I love stories about small/limited places, about labyrinths, about huge and vast and endless places full of wonder, and the House is all of those.
Piranesi is a love it or "why does anyone like this?" book. Not to oversell but it's one of the best books I've ever read. I loved it so much that I really struggled to write any kind of review of it.
It has some barriers to entry, such as Eccentric Capitalization. There are in-story reasons for this but I find it hard to read, so I listened to the audiobook. Happily, it's a fantastic performance - funny, warm, emotional, poetic - and has the bonus of allowing me to imagine the narrator as looking like Chiwetel Ejiofor, which I think is more-or-less how he canonically looks anyway.
Here is some non-spoilery and gorgeous fan art that really captures the tone of the book:
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOUSE IS IMMEASURABLE; ITS KINDNESS INFINITE.
Spoilers for the entire book below cut. Seriously, it's more fun going in knowing as little as possible.
I could listen to Chiwetel Ejiofor read "in the sixth day of the fourth month in the Year the Albatross came to the South-Western Halls" forever. He makes it sound like an incantation from some lost saga... which is kind of what it is.
I loved the whole exploration of how we construct knowledge and reality. There was so much revising of knowledge and interpretation of knowledge, and how that's affected by what you already know/believe. I love the way things keep getting looked at with new perspective. Piranesi would have seen Raphael as the perfect wise queen-mother, but the man he is at the end sees her as the brave seeker who is at risk herself. He sees an old man as the king. And the House, which at the beginning is the entire world, reverses so at the end, the entire world becomes the House. It's so elegant and beautiful.
I loved that the book didn't end with him leaving the House, but continued, with him continuing to learn and change and recontextualize things. He even went and found that poor other guy who'd been imprisoned there, and was kind to him without being naive.
And he keeps meeting Raphael! And she keeps visiting the House! And how the conclusion threaded the needle of having him grow beyond Piranesi and still keep the most important parts of Piranesi - losing the naivete, but keeping the kindness and sense of wonder. He understands that the Other was a monster and is angry at him, but, in a particularly beautiful passage, still prepares and cares for his body.
Piranesi
That is all I knew going into the book, and I had an absolutely wonderful time learning the rest as I went along. I recommend doing the same.
The narrator is one of my all-time favorite characters, an explorer and a scientist and a philosopher, at once deeply naive and extremely intelligent. But most of all, he is kind. I have rarely loved a protagonist so much.
At one point he finds a pair of albatrosses building a nest, and knows that they will need more dried seaweed to construct it. He has some, which he needs to make a fire for himself, but gives it to them, reasoning:
What is a few days of feeling cold compared to a new albatross in the world?
Piranesi is a book filled with beauty and wonder and understated horror, kindness and cruelty and the search for knowledge. It's often very funny, and, to my complete surprise, also quite suspenseful. For a book in which most of the action is the narrator wandering around a structure, it's also extremely narratively compelling. For me, anyway.
While listening, I was very torn between listening slowly, to fully enjoy every sentence, and all at once, because I was dying to see what will happen. It blows my mind that a Susanna Clarke book is this suspenseful as much as I love her, everything else I've read by her was leisurely to say the least. This is leisurely in a good way, AND has narrative drive.
It's a book almost designed to appeal to me specifically in some ways; I love stories which are about exploration and learning and observing nature and getting to know a fascinating place intimately, and a lot of the book is about that. I love stories about small/limited places, about labyrinths, about huge and vast and endless places full of wonder, and the House is all of those.
Piranesi is a love it or "why does anyone like this?" book. Not to oversell but it's one of the best books I've ever read. I loved it so much that I really struggled to write any kind of review of it.
It has some barriers to entry, such as Eccentric Capitalization. There are in-story reasons for this but I find it hard to read, so I listened to the audiobook. Happily, it's a fantastic performance - funny, warm, emotional, poetic - and has the bonus of allowing me to imagine the narrator as looking like Chiwetel Ejiofor, which I think is more-or-less how he canonically looks anyway.
Here is some non-spoilery and gorgeous fan art that really captures the tone of the book:
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOUSE IS IMMEASURABLE; ITS KINDNESS INFINITE.
Spoilers for the entire book below cut. Seriously, it's more fun going in knowing as little as possible.
I could listen to Chiwetel Ejiofor read "in the sixth day of the fourth month in the Year the Albatross came to the South-Western Halls" forever. He makes it sound like an incantation from some lost saga... which is kind of what it is.
I loved the whole exploration of how we construct knowledge and reality. There was so much revising of knowledge and interpretation of knowledge, and how that's affected by what you already know/believe. I love the way things keep getting looked at with new perspective. Piranesi would have seen Raphael as the perfect wise queen-mother, but the man he is at the end sees her as the brave seeker who is at risk herself. He sees an old man as the king. And the House, which at the beginning is the entire world, reverses so at the end, the entire world becomes the House. It's so elegant and beautiful.
I loved that the book didn't end with him leaving the House, but continued, with him continuing to learn and change and recontextualize things. He even went and found that poor other guy who'd been imprisoned there, and was kind to him without being naive.
And he keeps meeting Raphael! And she keeps visiting the House! And how the conclusion threaded the needle of having him grow beyond Piranesi and still keep the most important parts of Piranesi - losing the naivete, but keeping the kindness and sense of wonder. He understands that the Other was a monster and is angry at him, but, in a particularly beautiful passage, still prepares and cares for his body.
Piranesi
