Piranesi

272 pages

English language

Published April 7, 2020 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

ISBN:
978-1-5266-2242-6
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4 stars (320 reviews)

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 …

18 editions

Mysterious and beautiful

5 stars

I loved the world in which this story is set. An infinite labyrinth of statues and sea, occupied by characters that I wanted deeply to know more about.

You follow the story through the journal of the point of view character. The best parts of the story are, to me, when the writer's and the reader's understanding of events diverge. It felt like a Hitchcock movie, where I, with full access to the main character's thoughts, started coming to different interpretations of information they've received - and what I knew compelled me to keep reading in hopes that the main character would catch up. I also appreciated the themes of the story: kindness, interaction with place, memory, ambition.

Beautiful

5 stars

A beautiful reflection on the human condition. And an absolute masterclass in world building. Unlike other fantasy novels, the world is not very deep, but the way it is revealed and layered through the eyes of the protagonist is unlike anything I've read before.

Un intrigant labyrinthe

4 stars

Lu en cinq jours. Difficile exercice que de le résumer, et il n'est pas certain que cela serve à grand chose. Piranesi vit et explore La Maison Éternelle, peuplées de Statues gigantesques et d'Oiseaux. Le livre est captivant sur son début, où il en dit peu sur le pourquoi et montre cette Maison.

J'ai reçu cette lecture à un moment où j'avais besoin d'évasion, de plonger un peu en moi. La Maison Éternelle a constitué tout à la fois un échappatoire, un lieu de méditation et de refuge. Une réalité à expérimenter plutôt qu'une énigme à déchiffrer.

Intrigue! Mystery! Other worlds!

4 stars

This book started off strange and developed into a lovely mystery that I had fun unraveling alongside the narrator.

Susanna Clarke uses her descriptions of the narrator's environment to the fullest degree. What at first I found a confusing place was clear once the narration started. Piranesi is such an interesting character, and his voice in this book is unlike most others I've read.

4/5. This book is so creative, intriguing, and only the very beginning was hard to understand. I've never read a book like Piranesi, but I hope to find many more.

A small masterpiece

5 stars

I really really loved this book. It has elements I gravitate towards - fantasy, mystery. Labyrinths! It also has a wonderful and truly inspiring main character. Add to that Susanna Clarke's beautiful, poetic, image dense writing. And a sly sense of both humor and horror. There is also an amazing audio version read by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

reviewed Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

A great read

5 stars

A very fun and easy read. Some of the fun mystery gets explained away, but there is still enough left that made me want to continue to the end.

The book seemed like it was going to end in a predictable way. I was kind of right, but it didn’t even matter. The ending I got was much more comfy and satisfying than I was expecting.

Piranesi

5 stars

Todavía estoy procesando lo que he leído, y creo que va a permanecer dando vueltas por mi cabeza durante mucho tiempo.

Es increíble todo lo que albergan las pocas páginas de esta novela. Leer Piranesi es muy parecido a caminar por un sueño. Cuando te quieres dar cuenta, sus descripciones de la Casa y sus extraños personajes te han absorbido y todo lo que quieres es desentrañar sus secretos y desvelar qué hay detrás de esta narrativa tan intrigante.

Recomiendo encarecidamente su lectura.

Well Worth Waiting For

5 stars

I've been excited by Susanna Clarke's writing since I first picked up Jonathan Strange, and when I first heard this book was coming out, I was suddenly aware that I hadn't heard about her in a long while! Some Googling revealed that she'd been suffering from severe health issues for years now, and this book was the result of more years of hardship than I could fathom. I preordered it immediately, and read it the moment it arrived.

Wow. So different, so quiet, and so, so good.

I've read plenty of reviews that disparage the book (usually because they felt the plot was thin or easily deduced, or because the narration was too simple or unrelatable), but I enjoyed the hell out of it. I was surprised when reveals came, I was drawn into the narration and worldbuilding, and I found the narrator endearing, if a bit alien in perspective. …

Review of 'Piranesi' on 'LibraryThing'

No rating

It has been some months since I read Piranesi and I have hesitated to review it. To do so feels like coming in at a stride from a bracing country walk, entering a beautiful room, and trampling mud, tufts of dead grass, and clumps of peat all over their fabulous Tabriz carpet.

returnreturn

Piranesi is a remarkable book. It tells the deeply weird story of a man, the narrator, who spends his days in close examination of the statues that populate the halls of the House he lives in. ‘House’ does the place an injustice; it is a world in itself, with an ocean in the lower floors and birds circling the upper. The original Piranesi, the eighteenth-century engraving artist, produced a series of ‘invented prisons’, but they could hardly be more involved or complex than the House.

returnreturn

Piranesi has, he believes, always lived in the House, and is …

Unfolding into the (Un)known

5 stars

I didn't know what to expect coming into this and I firmly recommend trying to go in with as little knowledge as you possibly can. The unfolding that occurs throughout the narrative was the payoff, the end just another event along a wave of experience.

A library book that has inevitably made it to my own collection, amongst the shelf of favorites that are destined to be reread over and over again.

Even better the second time

4 stars

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