Piranesi
Fiction
Bloomsbury Publishing USA
September 28, 2021
Paperback
272
Purchased
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.
My review:
What in the world would possess me to pick up a fantasy book you ask? Blame it on this one winning last year's Women's Prize for Fiction. I follow that prize more than any other, and I usually have luck with their choices, but this one was a huge stretch for me and I put it off for months. This was certainly the strangest book I may have ever read, but yet I actually enjoyed it. It's not going to end up on any best of lists from me, but I was actually pretty captivated by this little guy named Piranesi. You spend most of this book with him exploring the world he is in, and it is composed of endless corridors in what can only be described as a mythical castle. He meticulously catalogs his surroundings, as well as patterns of the tides that fill up portions of his dwelling, in journals. He is visited on a certain day of the week by someone he calls The Other, who brings him his necessities and receives updates on Piranesi's projects. Strange things start happening when yet another person shows up in his space, and The Other tells him to stay away from this bad creature. The plot then intensifies from there as the reader tries to figure out who is telling the truth, and who exactly is Piranesi? I will say that even though it takes a while to get going, I found the descriptions of his house with all its statues and labyrinths fascinating! I am a pretty meticulous person so I also loved his sense of structure and record keeping. I found the ending to be satisfying, but just vague enough to promote further contemplation.
I definitely went out of my comfort zone with this one, and while I didn't love it, I enjoyed it enough to recommend it to others also looking to dip their toes into the fantasy genre. Once again I can say that The Women's Prize didn't let me down (although I would have personally picked Unsettled Ground had I been the sole judge!).
