New York Times BestsellerWinner of the Women’s Prize for FictionWorld Fantasy Awards FinalistFrom 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 … 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.
more
An imaginative, psychologically deep book that I continued to ponder long after I had read the last page.
Awful book. Wrote a review on its page.
Haunting. Unexpected. Grabbed me from the first few pages. That said, I don’t really know how to describe this book. It feels like it’s all about the mood and the scenery (as told through the eyes of an innocent).
I am going to open my review candidly and say that I thought this book was excellent. The creation of character, the way things are revealed, the culmination of the book – I thought that it was masterful. Piranesi was a really good read and this was a surprise to me, which made it all the more sweet.
I have encountered Susanna Clarke before with her bestseller Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell which I attempted to read some years ago and had to abandon it because I found it so tedious. I tried, willing it to capture me but it never did and so, I gave up. This is not a regret of mine at all. However, it did mean that I started reading Piranesi with a fair degree of wariness and, I am ashamed to admit it, with a view to being disappointed.
But it is not disappointing at all. Far from it. The book is set in a strange other worldly setting called the House where our eponymous hero is based. The House is open and near the sea as it is regularly washed by tides and Piranesi has attuned himself to these, performing calculations to predict them and he applies this level of logic to everything around him, including his mapping of the House. To the reader, it would seem to be an austere, cold place, the only inhabitants being birds and the statues that adorn the Halls. Piranesi does have one other human contact who he names the Other, who meets him on specified days to converse and quiz Piranesi.
Clarke does a wonderful job of presenting this world through the eyes of Piranesi. It initially means that your perspective is narrow but this gradually expands, along with Piranesi’s knowledge, nuggets of information being carefully dropped at just the right pace throughout the book.
I loved the evocation of the House, which to me felt like a huge Greek temple and the way that Piranesi navigates it with his naming of different aspects. There was so much that was unique about this novel that you must experience it for yourself. It’s a bit bizarre and it takes a little to get into it at the very start as you work out where you are and what is going on but this is part of its appeal, or it was for me.
I can’t recommend it enough.
A gorgeous, spellbinding mystery… This book is a treasure, washed up upon a forgotten shore, waiting to be discovered.
Clarke is the author of the hugely successful Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I enjoyed Piranesi more than the earlier work. This story is more meditative. Ideas of personal identity, memory and of what makes life meaningful are touched on. While the plot, such as it is, deals with mysteries of the Labyrinth, the story, if I can make that distinction, deals more with personal questions (who am I, what is my purpose, what to do the events and experiences of my mean?) The building/labyrinth/world which is the setting of most of the story, is, especially in the first half of the book: eerie, mysterious and almost a character in its own right. In the second half the emphasis shifts away from the mysteries of the Labyrinth towards the conflicts between the various characters. Piranesi is the main character and we actually do not get much insight into the other characters he encounters. Instead the focus is the who should be trusted and why the characters act as they do. I found it to be a very engaging story with a surprisingly satisfying ending. Recommended.
A fascinating read. This book contains stupendous world building. It was difficult to put down. I highly recommend this book to you.
I adore this book, and I enthusiastically recommend it. I loved Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell also, and like that book, Piranesi is unusual–unusual enough that, of my friends who read it, only about half loved it like I did.
Why I like it: It is astonishingly creative, both in the storytelling structure, the world it creates, and the prose itself. The story is led by an unreliable narrator, mentally damaged and imprisoned. (I’m writing a book with a character fighting mental illness, so I found Ms. Clarke’s portrayal fascinating as writing craft.)
The underlying plot is a mystery/thriller. It’s engaging and suspenseful, but paced like literary fiction (don’t expect Dan Brown). The plot works, but in the big picture of this book, I think the plot is almost irrelevant. What I remember about the book now (a month after is reading) is the amazing setting and the three main characters. The lead character, evil dude, and the policewoman are complex. This is not a book of tropes.
What may not work for all readers: because of the narrator’s obsessions, the descriptions are elongated and manically precise. (It reminds me of a book I read at least 30 years ago, Against the Grain, by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, which is endless sensory writing about perfumes, flowers, etc.)
If you’re not convinced by the first few pages, I suggest reading at least 20 or 30 before giving up. It takes a while to get into the rhythms of the prose.
A bittersweet exploration of isolation and hidden traps. Despite the dark parts, it still reads as hopeful and beautiful. Packs a punch even though it’s less than 300 pages.
Well, this was different.
Fantasy usually has a fairly predictable arc: brave heroes without great resources still somehow manage to overthrow the evil forces, most commonly in a semi-medieval setting. Not this book! For most of it I had no idea where the author might be going, but in the meantime it was extremely interesting.
It’s set in a labyrinth, an apparently infinite palace of great empty halls and tall, sweeping staircases. It’s partially in ruins, and the lower level is drowned, the upper level mostly open to the sky. All halls are populated by statues in enormous variety. The protagonist is called Piranesi, in reference to the Italian architect/artist who painted buildings sort of like this. Piranesi may not however really be the protagonist’s name.
I won’t attempt to describe the plot, except to say that the reader will eventually find out what’s going on in the story, and that Piranesi, who one will find disturbingly odd at the beginning, definitely grows on you and becomes very likable. It’s the kind of book that gives you weird dreams (in a good way).
An intriguing premise that gets you wondering about the nature of the world that the main character inhabits. The story develops nicely as characters are added and slowly the veil is lifted. A satisfying ending too.
One of the most delightful reads I’ve experienced in a while. Piranesi is an enjoyable puzzle but once the puzzle becomes clear it is no less enjoyable because of the charm of the narrator, the thrill of the plot, and the beautiful mystique of the House.
A light fantasy with a lot of charm. This was another highly anticipated release from 2020 that I was itching to read.
Don’t be deterred by the first ten pages or so. The diary entry format and unconventional calendar it follows had me crossing my eyes and asking, “wait, what?” quite a few times, not to mention the way Piranesi jumps right into things with little to no context. It was a bit confusing but also added to the charm of his narration, and if you can find your footing, you’ll find yourself reading a unique and enchanting little book.
The real allure of this story is of course the setting with its infinite halls of statues and shifting tides. The descriptions of this world and the well-maintained mystery of it all was by far this book’s greatest strength, with the plot being fairly simple otherwise. Even when playing the part of detective, Piranesi is not exactly the most talented sleuth partly due to his naivety and the fact that he’s content with his life in the labyrinth. He never delves much deeper to find answers beyond their surface level value, which fits his character but also leaves a lot of gaps in terms of information which I, the reader, would like to know.
Rest assured, plenty of questions are answered and plenty of mysteries are kept pleasantly vague. It felt perfectly suited to its genre and is a must-read for fantasy lovers.
A unique story like nothing else I’ve ever read. I was immediately taken in by this strange world created by Clarke and the endearing main character. Although a charming and original plot, the ending felt so underwhelming I am forced to say that, overall, the book was okay rather than very good.
Well this was a rollercoaster of a read. I started off almost DNFing it, then became intrigued, then horrified, and ended melancholic. It was beautiful, frightening, and strangely magical, and also weirdly simplistic and complex. I feel like I should have been on something to fully understand this story. It was definitely too smart for me a lot of the time, but I still thoroughly enjoyed what I did understand!
Very unusual. Lovely main character.
What an extraordinary book! I love it when an author takes chances, heads into uncharted territory, does something genuinely and uniquely different, and somehow makes it work. This is an assured, brilliant piece of fiction. Don’t go into it with any expectations at all – just let it take you along for the ride.
True story–when I was a little girl, I used to amuse myself by pretending the bland, cinderblock building that was my elementary school had transformed into something magical. A weird sort of underwater world that was held captive inside my school’s bones–the halls were filled with schools of fish, the cafeteria had a green-gold kelp forest, the locker rooms lurked with great white sharks, and blue whales danced slow circles in the gymnasium.
Because of my childhood daydreams, this book felt extremely familiar to me. Extremely whimsical, with a bit of a mystery. Great read.
It’s just as good as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I want to go there.
Odd and beautiful. I’m still thinking about it!