Harper Ellison★ Sage · Lv 7
todayStrange and beautiful and unlike anything. It rewired something in me. Just trust it.
Fantasy
Piranesi
4.6· 1,111 ratings
Published 2020272 pagesEnglishHaunting · Original
The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.
Why read it
A man lives contentedly in an endless house of statues and tides, keeping careful journals and believing the World holds only fifteen people, until evidence surfaces that he was not always who he thinks he is.
The premise
Clarke's slim, strange novel unfolds through the diaries of a gentle narrator who wanders a labyrinthine House of infinite halls. As small clues accumulate, it becomes a mystery about identity, captivity, and whether a world of wonder can be worth the truth it hides.
The story behind it
Clarke published her second novel in 2020, sixteen years after Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, following a long illness. Piranesi won the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction and takes its name from the Italian artist known for imaginary prisons.
What awaits inside
- 01
A world of one house
The infinite halls of statues form a setting so vivid it becomes the book's heart.
- 02
The unreliable innocent
The narrator's trusting voice hides the truth of his situation from himself and the reader.
- 03
Identity and memory
The mystery of who Piranesi really was drives the slow, dawning revelation.
- 04
Wonder versus truth
The novel weighs the beauty of the House against the cost of the ignorance it requires.
From the book
Piranesi records the ocean's tides flooding the lower halls and reverently tends the bones of the dead he has found among the statues.
The arrival of a stranger the narrator calls '16' shatters his belief that the World contains only a handful of living people.
4.6
1,111 ratings
5
639
4
459
3
12
2
0
1
0