Website | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository | Indiebound | Indigo | Library
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.
First sentence: “When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of three Tides.”
Beware: Don’t read too much about the world of Piranesi. You’ll want to go into this blind because it’s a wonderful journey full of magic and beauty about a weird majestic House with endless wonders. (This goes without saying, don’t expect another Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.)
Piranesi is a hard book to describe, if only because anything I want to say about this book feels like a spoiler that readers need to unveil themselves. How can people even understand the breathtaking magic you find in the House with its infinite Halls and Vestibules with marble statues and the waves crashing around like you’re near the seaside?
There’s something very dreamlike about this world that Susanna Clarke created. This surreal house has a way of hypnotizing you with its beauty. It’s no wonder Piranesi falls.
(If you haven’t read Piranesi, stop reading this and read the book now if you want a weird, dream-like story!!!)
