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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.
( Read more... )
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.
( Read more... )
Piranesi
