Review: Piranesi

Piranesi
By Susanna Clarke

Published By: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: September 15, 2020
Date Read: March 31, 2022
Genre: Adult – Fantasy
Source: Bought
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 246

From Goodreads:
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

For readers of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.

Piranesi is such a strange little book. I still don’t really know how I fully feel about it. I downloaded this one as an Audiobook when it was in one of Audible’s sales a couple of months back. I finally got round to listening to this one after seeing it was pretty short, and I was trying to bump up my reading challenge. It is completely different to what I expected it to be. It’s really bizarre from start to finish… but I did end up really enjoying it.

Piranesi is told through the diary entries of a 30-something year-old man who lives in a dangerous labyrinth filled with magic and mysteries. He is searching for scientific discoveries within this labyrinth along with his friend ‘The Other’ but all is not as it seems.

Honestly, the start of this book was really rocky for me. I am not entirely sure if I had been reading it physically, that I would have continued. The narrator of the audiobook was fantastic, and definitely kept me intrigued. I remember getting about an hour into the audiobook and texting a friend my thoughts, because I had no clue, at that point, what the hell this book was about, what was going on… it was just weird and I didn’t have a clue what was happening or where it was going.

I realise now, that the beginning was probably intentionally wrote that way. This book has a bit of a mystery to it, and it drops little breadcrumbs and hints every now and then and it starts to make more sense as you start to piece these together. And you do this along with Piranesi, as he also doesn’t really know anything. By the end I started to really enjoy this book. I remember listening to it on my way home from work and I was driving down the road mouth agape, because something had just clicked and I was like NO FREAKING WAYYYY!!!

Piranesi is so odd. It’s the strangest book I have ever read… and yet I will definitely be recommending it. What a journey you will go through while reading this book! If you don’t mind being completely clueless and are happy to just enjoy the ride, then this book is for you!

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