Piranesi
2020
- form:novel
- genre:fantasy
- english literature
- nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2020-10-04
- labyrinths
- fiction
- curiosities and wonders
- dwellings
- dead
The story
**From the *New York Times* bestselling author of *Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell*, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.** 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. For readers of Neil Gaiman's *The Ocean at the End of the Lane* and fans of Madeline Miller's *Circe*, *Piranesi* introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth full of startling images of surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds. This description comes from the publisher.
What it’s like
Quiet, clear-eyed and strange, this is a book of vast empty halls and slow looking: sentences that walk through marble corridors lined with statues, noticing the grey light off the water, the cold stone underfoot, the cloud-banked sky seen through high windows. The voice is a first-person diary, courteous, precise and a little childlike in its wonder, so the prose reads like an attentive naturalist's notebook kept in an impossible building. Tides surge up staircases in sudden, sea-smelling rushes, and then the house goes still again, the sensory world alternating between soft, meticulous calm and cold, echoing dread. Its mood is wistful and mysterious, with a slow-burning unease under the wonder. The pace is unhurried, built on routine, small discoveries and quiet repetitions, and the emotional arc follows a gentle, lonely man slowly coming to understand the shape of his own life. Violence is absent; there is a sense of loss and some frightening moments, but nothing graphic and no sexual content. It suits a rainy afternoon, a late-night reading session, or a long train journey, and is for readers who love atmospheric fantasy, puzzle-like worlds and tender, contemplative narration.
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