Piranesi

This is one of those books that's unlike any other. It's surreal and dreamy and the sheer "what the heck's going on?" factor compelled me to read it all in one day.

A novel like this - light on plot, with an extremely limited cast of characters, told in an epistolary style - really sinks or swims on the narrative voice. Luckily the titular Piranesi is fun to read, and comes across as practical and clever, curious and sweet. His ignorance is charming rather than frustrating, and of course his naivete is all part of the mystery.

Highly recommended to anyone who loves an atmospheric and/or experimental story.

This is one of those books that's unlike any other. It's surreal and dreamy and the sheer "what the heck's going on?" factor compelled me to read it all in one day.

A novel like this - light on plot, with an extremely limited cast of characters, told in an epistolary style - really sinks or swims on the narrative voice. Luckily the titular Piranesi is fun to read, and comes across as practical and clever, curious and sweet. His ignorance is charming rather than frustrating, and of course his naivete is all part of the mystery.

Highly recommended to anyone who loves an atmospheric and/or experimental story.

a ver, creo que está claro de después de leer Jonathan Strange y Mr Norrell tengo que leerme todo lo que ha publicado esta señora. osea es una obligación moral.

edit: bueno ya me lo leí y DGFLJKSWKJSGKJDSAKJGESKJAWEFS,JHBJKEFWBKJwefjkfwek,

bueno ya, osea esto no es justo. es que al final me voy a acabar leyendo el libro de historias cortas porque Susanna Clarke se ha vuelto de mis autoras favoritas y me veo en la obligación de leer todo lo que escribe.

ahora, hablando del libro, es una experiencia. me dio unas vibras súper fuertes a Interview with the whisperer, lo cual no me esperaba xdd. es que la forma en la que se presenta la historia, la casa, los temas... Me ha gustado leer un protagonista como Piranesi.

realmente es mejor no saber mucho más que lo que pone la sinopsis sobre la historia, así que no voy a decir mucho más por miedo a hacer spoilers. simplemente merece la pena leerlo (que además el libro no es como el anterior de la autora, no llega a las 250 páginas. que eso no significa que sea súper simple y ligero, pero no lo comparemos con leer un libro de 1000 páginas xdd).

I found this book a bit slow for the first 50–60 pages, which are spent mostly describing the World without much of any sort of Plot happening. It only really begins to pick up around Part 3, when the mystery inherent to the setting starts to unravel, all through the eyes of a narrator not so much unreliable as naïve and lacking in knowledge, which makes him unable to understand things which are clear to the reader. It's the sort of book where it's worth reading (or at least skimming) the first few parts again to see what you missed the first read through.

With splashes of Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Buried Giant" in a setting partly reminiscent of Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast"-trilogy, Clarke's book is a melancholy, yet innocent, account of the life of the man known to himself (and referred to by the Other) as "Piranesi".

Between the lines lies the question of identity (also asked by Ishiguro); who this "Piranesi" is, was and will become forms a central part of the story. As does the general question of what defines me as an individual and how this current manifestation of "Me" relates to earlier manifestations of myself. Where does yesterday-Jan Kjellin reside and what influence - if any - does he have the power to wield over now-Jan Kjellin? And further: what influence will now-Jan Kjellin have over tomorrow-Jan Kjellin? Does yesterday-Jan Kjellin sleep inside me? Can I wake him when/if I should need him?

Let's get back to the book, though. I find the House to be one of the better incarnations of Gormenghast that I have read so far. Of course, it's not a Gormenghast per se, but it still has that immense, bordering on the infinite, feel to it that make Peake's books so intriguing. A world within a world.

We live in a world in which we exist and live and need to make sense of to be able to exist and live in. The House is a world within and without that world, that helps us to live in this world, given that we can access that inner/outer world.

If I'm to take anything with me from "Piranesi", it might be that it communicates the value (to some it might be a need) of having that access. Of being able to communicate freely with yesterday-Jan Kjellin to the benefit of today-Jan Kjellin as well as tomorrow-Jan Kjellin. It has he power to set you free.

Or, in the words of a current energy drink commercial: "The House gives you wings".

I'm a big sucker for mysterious spaces and Piranesi delivers in spades. Characters are very interesting too, the story's theme resonates as well.

When I was in my 20s, I had a healthy social life AND social anxiety which is a hell of a cocktail. Every night I'd come home full of beer and emotions and I'd have real difficulty in shutting my brain off so I could go to sleep. Nothing worked. I'd just lie in my bed going over everything I'd said or did trying to think about things I could have said or did differently. For hours. And then I bought a DVD box set of The Prisoner. I'd put on an episode and it would pummel my brain into submission. Everything about it is so strange and confusing that my mind would give up trying to figure out what was happening and just shut down after 10 minutes.

Piranesi brought back this feeling so hard. I don't just mean thematically (although there are plenty of similarities between the book and The Prisoner -- similarities I'm sure someone with a medium dot com account and a pathological inability to allow a take go un-taken will happily point out). I really struggled with the opening of this book because every night I would feel my mind saying "fuuuuucccck this book I can't figure out what's going on" and shutting down. Every single time. It wasn't until page 100 or so where something finally clicked for me and the story started to make sense and I blasted through the second half.

Loved it. It’s a perfect perfect autumn story.

Much like the computer game Myst, the reader is set down in the middle of an unusual world known as the House. Piranesi, one of two inhabitants, has extensively explored and mapped this world, including its seasons and tides.

The reader immediately thinks, "What or where is this?" But not Piranesi. This is his world as he knows it.

I found myself questioning whether I wanted to finish this book around page 50 (a fifth of the book) because the story was simply mundane. Piranesi doesn't question his world and his journaling was about his bland and banal existence. These were the hardest pages to read because their content was so repetitive. I was slogging through them.

Eventually, we learn there's a secret to discover and mystery to unfold. I'm happy I pressed on because reading was very quick and entertaining from there forward.

I haven't read Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but having read favorable reviews and this her newest work, I'm looking forward to it.