![]() ![]() It’s a fun novel with moments that make the reader think a bit. It is a rare that I read a book in 24 hours but with Piranesi I was so involved in the story that I had to force myself to leave the book. As with Daphne du Maurier’s Manderley, this story also is about a house that contains secrets but in Piranesi there’s a more fantastical root. Clarke places the clues slowly so that the reader can unravel the mystery with Piranesi. Piranesi is a clever twisty tale which merges some bits of fantasy with metaphysical elements. One day he starts to notice strange things – why are there pieces of paper with handwriting floating about in one of the rooms? do the skeletons have any significance? how does The Other manage to get him creature comforts such as shoes?, who is leaving strange messages? and is there someone else in the house? ![]() Piranesi notes everything in a series of journals. He fishes, he wanders around the rooms noting things and twice a week he meets The Other and he quizzes Piranesi about his memory. Aside the sea life and some skeletons the only other inhabitant of the house is a guru figure, Piranesi calls The Other. This is the living quarter of the book’s narrator Piranesi. Some rooms just are beautiful to look out. Some floors have tides coming in and flooding the place. The novel setting is a house with many rooms and floors. Thus it is, indeed a ‘bob book’ throughout. The other one is lots of seemingly unrelated plotlines converging into one whole and the last one is when a character is in a somewhat confusing situation and has to use various clues to figure out everything. One is the quirky narrator who observes life through an askew angle. We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Piranesi, a new novel from Susanna Clarke, the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. To be more specific there are three types. Although chock full of literary references, I was captivated by the open-minded curiosity and thought-fulness of Piranesi as his world and outlook change.I have mentioned on the blog that there are ‘bob books’. The “Other”, also a human being, visits him occasionally. The bottom floor is washed by the sea, the upper floor by wind and the middle is where he lives along with seabirds. This abidingly original novel is written from the viewpoint of Piranesi, who lives in an enormous House of three floors comprised of infinite Halls, Statues and Vestibules. 'Head-spinning … Fully imagined and richly evoked' Telegraph 'A gorgeous, spellbinding mystery … This book is a treasure, washed up upon a forgotten shore, waiting to be discovered' ERIN MORGENSTERN It is a miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling' MADELINE MILLER New York Times BestsellerWinner of the Womens Prize for FictionWorld Fantasy Awards FinalistFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality. 'It subverts expectations throughout … Utterly otherworldly' Guardian ![]() 'What a world Susanna Clarke conjures into being … Piranesi is an exquisite puzzle-box' DAVID MITCHELL The Beauty of the House is immeasurable its Kindness infinite. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous. Lost texts must be found secrets must be uncovered. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims? Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, 'one of our greatest living authors' New York Magazine ![]() SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARDĬHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, FINANCIAL TIMES, i PAPER, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, TIME MAGAZINE, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, BBC CULTURE, NETGALLEY AND THE CHURCH TIMES ![]()
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