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alobearI was excited to hear of Susanna Clarke's new novel, Piranesi, and it got to the top of my reading pile very quickly after I obtained it. It's a lot shorter than I expected, given the doorstop size of Jonathan Strange, but I enjoyed it even more.
It's an odd book - very dreamlike and narrated by someone who is in a very odd situation which feels to him completely normal. Piranesi lives in the Eternal House, a vast set of gothic halls, filled with countless amazing statues. He fishes in the flooded lower areas and pays homage to the thirteen skeletons that are scattered in various places.
While the reader spends the book wondering who he is, how he got there and what's going to happen next, Piranesi is quite content with his life, which makes for a very interesting conflict between tension and tone. It's masterfully done - for a story where very little actually happens and we spend all our time with a protagonist who is largely unconcerned with the mysteries of his existence, it's a compelling read that had me up at 6am this morning to read the last 60 pages.
The book reminds me of a sort of cross between The Slow Regard of Silent Things (similar dreamlike quality and protagonist who forges a life in an odd environment) and The House of Leaves (weird, vast house of giant halls with an underlying sense of foreboding). And it really works!
It's an odd book - very dreamlike and narrated by someone who is in a very odd situation which feels to him completely normal. Piranesi lives in the Eternal House, a vast set of gothic halls, filled with countless amazing statues. He fishes in the flooded lower areas and pays homage to the thirteen skeletons that are scattered in various places.
While the reader spends the book wondering who he is, how he got there and what's going to happen next, Piranesi is quite content with his life, which makes for a very interesting conflict between tension and tone. It's masterfully done - for a story where very little actually happens and we spend all our time with a protagonist who is largely unconcerned with the mysteries of his existence, it's a compelling read that had me up at 6am this morning to read the last 60 pages.
The book reminds me of a sort of cross between The Slow Regard of Silent Things (similar dreamlike quality and protagonist who forges a life in an odd environment) and The House of Leaves (weird, vast house of giant halls with an underlying sense of foreboding). And it really works!
