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A review by emmaisnotavampire
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
This book… I don’t even know where to begin.
It was a hell of a ride, I kept feeling something big coming, I kept trying to guess, and of course I couldn’t ever predict whee this was going. I feel like my jaw dropped to the floor almost every time I turned a page.
In the beginning, world-building seems to be the only aim of the book, with its slow and descriptive pace that felt at once exploratory and contemplative. Honestly, I would have still loved it even if it actually had been: an alternative dimension where the planet is a house, its levels the land, the sky and the sea, all inhabited by statues… it sounded marvellous enough on its own. But once Piranesi’s story mystery slowly unfolds it becomes even more beautiful, and the parallels I found even more evident.
From the very start, there is some sort of underlying tension, a sense of unease, like something is wrong but you cannot quite tell what. The house is beautiful, yes, but also inhospitable: it is clear that Piranesi is not supposed to be there… except to Piranesi himself of course.
The discovery of what the house really represents adds an additional layer of academia to what I would have earlier defined as a fantasy thriller that I am more than happy to welcome. Knowledge-hungry, corrupted academics doing highly immoral stuff will always be my jam.
The “Ancient Knowledge” they keep mentioning, combined with the hypothesis that it has transferred to a parallel world, cannot but make me think of the house as Plato’s hyperuranion, the statues being the perfect platonic ideas that imperfect things are modelled after in the real world. The finale kind of proves that, willingly or unwillingly, the author did kind of intend them to be something like that.
The other incredibly fascinating aspect of this book I think is the concept of identity, and how it easily collapses with the appearance of a new perspective. Because really, who are we, when we don’t feel like who others think we are, but are proven not to be who we thought we were?
It was a hell of a ride, I kept feeling something big coming, I kept trying to guess, and of course I couldn’t ever predict whee this was going. I feel like my jaw dropped to the floor almost every time I turned a page.
In the beginning, world-building seems to be the only aim of the book, with its slow and descriptive pace that felt at once exploratory and contemplative. Honestly, I would have still loved it even if it actually had been: an alternative dimension where the planet is a house, its levels the land, the sky and the sea, all inhabited by statues… it sounded marvellous enough on its own. But once Piranesi’s story mystery slowly unfolds it becomes even more beautiful, and the parallels I found even more evident.
From the very start, there is some sort of underlying tension, a sense of unease, like something is wrong but you cannot quite tell what. The house is beautiful, yes, but also inhospitable: it is clear that Piranesi is not supposed to be there… except to Piranesi himself of course.
The discovery of what the house really represents adds an additional layer of academia to what I would have earlier defined as a fantasy thriller that I am more than happy to welcome. Knowledge-hungry, corrupted academics doing highly immoral stuff will always be my jam.
The “Ancient Knowledge” they keep mentioning, combined with the hypothesis that it has transferred to a parallel world, cannot but make me think of the house as Plato’s hyperuranion, the statues being the perfect platonic ideas that imperfect things are modelled after in the real world. The finale kind of proves that, willingly or unwillingly, the author did kind of intend them to be something like that.
The other incredibly fascinating aspect of this book I think is the concept of identity, and how it easily collapses with the appearance of a new perspective. Because really, who are we, when we don’t feel like who others think we are, but are proven not to be who we thought we were?