Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke (Audiobook read by Chiwetel Ejiofor)
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[image error]
[image error] [image error]
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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[image error]
[image error] [image error]
comments
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