Sampler Review | PIRANESI by Susanna Clarke

  

PIRANESI by Susanna Clarke
Publication: September 14, 2020
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre: Adult Fantasy / Mystery
Rating: ★★★★

Piranesi lives in the House.
Perhaps he always has.

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.

On Tuesdays and Fridays, Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food and waterlilies to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.

Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims?

Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite. -Publisher

It’s been sixteen years since Susanna Clarke’s Hugo award-winning debut, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Readers, of course, want to get their hands on her new book. And I am lucky enough to read an excerpt from Netgalley, just enough to be hooked.

PIRANESI opens with Clarke’s inclination for the strange. A huge House, somewhere, is a residence to thousands of statues divided into halls –halls clashed by tides at certain times of the day. At present, the House has two living residents as well, Piranesi and the Other. Piranesi, our narrator, keeps journals which he labeled in very peculiar ways. He has a critical mind and chronicles everything with meticulousness. He doesn’t seem to mind living alone, but his curiosity about many things is apparent. Piranesi himself is a curiosity. And the Other seems to hold the same opinion.

Compared to JSMN, PIRANESI is hundreds of pages shorter. Still, everybody knows that numbers cannot limit Clarke’s magic. The otherworldliness of the book amplifies the mystery enveloping the whole premise. Who is Piranesi? Where exactly is he? There are clues for the readers.


TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST | TUMBLR | BLOGLOVIN | GOODREADS

About the Author:

Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham in 1959 and spent her childhood in Northern England and Scotland.

She studied philosophy, politics, and economics at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, and taught in Turin and Bilbao for two years, before becoming an editor at Simon and Schuster in Cambridge, working on their cookery list. She is the author of seven short stories and novellas, published in anthologies in the USA. One of her short stories, ‘The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse’ was published in a limited edition, and her story 'Mr. Simonelli or The Fairy Widower' was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award 2001.

In 2004, her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, was published. It tells the story of two magicians in early 19th-century London and was shortlisted for the 2004 Guardian First Book Award and the Whitbread First Novel Award.

*Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and Netgalley for the uncorrected proof in exchange for this unbiased review.
*This post is a part of the monthly linkups organized by Lovely Audiobooks! You can click here to check it out and be a part of it.

Read more →

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Magician: A Respectable Profession in Fiction

  

For centuries, there had been an absence of practical magicians all over Britain. Magic lay dormant, sleeping, since the disappearance of the Raven King, until Mr. Norrell decided to disembowel himself from his library in York to prove the world that magic can be made anew through him and that being a Magician is a respectable profession. He was joined by Jonathan Strange in this endeavor as his apprentice, then later, as his rival.

It was his vanity for recognition, contempt for any theoretical magician, and his ambitious plan to erase the memory of the Raven King in magical history that fueled Mr. Norrell. Magic, for him, was an academic exercise. Meanwhile, Jonathan Strange was an endearing naïve man, who was not daunted by hardship; instead, he was lively, imaginative, and courageous to a fault. He was not afraid to experiment on a magic, neither deviate from what was written nor dare write his own.

The antagonist of the story was played by an unknown Faerie figure, which is frightening because of his emotional instability and childish whims. A duplicitous character whose only purpose was to sow havoc on the lives of others.

Define chunkster? JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL would be an apt definition. It inherits the disadvantage of any Victorian novel -lengthy. I have to put this on hold two years ago because I felt I was swimming through a quagmire. If it wasn't for the online buddy-reading we had at TFG, I wouldn't be able to finish this yet again. To add besides, Ms. Clarke used footnotes like they were a short dissertation on magic and its history. And she had a habit of digressing, often chapter-long. Intentionally, perhaps?

The good thing about this book is that its own disadvantage is also its redemption (if you survive the first 300 pages). The characters and plot built slowly, but thoroughly, through the pages. The main characters were well-played from being the protagonist, into being the antagonist, then back again. Ms. Clarke made sure that there were no coincidences in her book, only relationships –a handful of byroads that led to the same and only highway. And the short dissertation help brought the setting into a believable historical fact. Ms. Clarke surely went into painstaking length to marry historical characters, facts, and events with fantasy. Her detailed description of Faerie was both dreamlike and madness. Surreal.

I read this book for a month. A reader may read this book for two different reasons: One, because of the challenge. The length and superfluous plot of this book is not an easy feat to conquer. Two, for the sheer pleasure of reading a fresh take on fantasy and historical fiction. Or both, because the love of reading is a good enough excuse, as always.

Book Details:
Title: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Author: Susanna Clarke
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Fiction
Rating: ★★★½

Read more →