An odd and marvelous little book. While completely different from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and The Ladies of Grace Adieu, the slow reveal of a magical alternate world is the same and it is a joy to be swept along in Clarke's prose while gently puzzling through the mystery at the heart of the book. The secret doors to other worlds and journey alongside the protagonist to discover the ways of the world felt similar to Erin Morgenstern's recent The Starless Sea. I just hope we don't have to wait another 14 years for Clarke's next book!

Overall, I'm not quite sure how I felt about this book. It does kind of defy description, and the feeling of the book is something like reading the notes of a wanderer through Roman ruins. It did not feel supernatural in any sense, though there are elements of "doorways" and "other worlds" at play. I think I would have preferred more of a book about the house than about Piranesi sorting himself out and observing statues. Much of the book was a bit boring to me, only because it focused so much on repetitive thoughts, actions, descriptions of statues, etc. I wanted a bit more *zing* with the reveal of the various unreliable narration situations, but found myself underwhelmed. I wanted more of a "House of Leaves" by Mark Danielewski or "The Gray House" by Mariam Petrosyan, or even more about the house itself. The idea of a house with tides is so interesting, I felt like there was a missed opportunity to focus more on this place than on the riffs between the more boring people.

I loved this book. When I wasn’t reading Piranesi I was thinking about Piranesi and anticipating when I would get to return to the world of Piranesi. My advice is to go in knowing as little as possible and let the book reveal itself to you. It’s not Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell 2 - that’s the one piece of information I would internalize before beginning, particularly if you love that book. Piranesi is its own world; let it transport you there.

(I read an ARC of this novel provided free by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, Netgalley!)

Let me cut to the chase: If you're looking for more Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, this book is 100% definititely NOT IT.

That's not necessarily a bad thing - I just didn't like it as much. A little bit in, I described it thus: "So far, it's like if a not-so-amazing Borges wrote The Starless Sea?" And that's still about right.

I should probably note that I'd just read Erin Morgenstern's new novel, The Starless Sea, which has A LOT in common with Piranesi. It's like the library except there are no books. Kind of.

For the first 60% of Piranesi, we're in a vast (endless?) set of halls with the titular character. Piranesi has been there for a long time, and he knows his way around hundreds of them. He catches fish to eat, and a tide comes in and drowns some of the halls periodically. He gets a visitor every so often, and they talk for a while. The visitor gives Piranesi gifts.

And eventually, we get clues as to what's going on.

That's pretty much it. I enjoyed it well enough, but it didn't live up to my expectations, which, granted, were insanely high because Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is one of my favorite novels. Don't disappoint yourself by coming to this one expecting another like the former. You'll probably like it a lot more if you approach it without expectations.

Should you read it? Yes. Is it as good as Clarke's previous work? I don't think so, but it's not bad either. It's just okay.

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for this long awaited ARC!

Oh Susanna Clarke how I have missed thee! It's been 16 years since you brought Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell into the world and I've waited 16 long years to see what else you had hiding up your sleeve. Piranesi did not disappoint! I could have easily sat and read this book in one sitting but instead it took me just 3 days. I couldn't get enough of it! Again, you put so much thought into the descriptions, you could actually feel yourself wandering the Halls of The House.

If at all possible, this is the kind of book you should go into knowing as little as possible about it. It can be confusing and even disorienting at first, but it's a book that is very smart about how it is going to teach you what it is, so I recommend letting the book do that rather than any reviews or jacket copy.

Susanna Clarke's Piranesi is beautifully written, both in words and cadence. Initially, I wasn't sure what I was actually reading, though hints came throughout. It has no true a-ha moments, but a steady build with sensual prose. Like delicately peeling back the many petals of a rose to find the center. Piranesi is not a long book nor a tedius read, but you may find yourself lingering over the descriptions and patterns, trying to unravel all the threads for yourself.

Ten pages in, I began to suspect that Piranesi would be one of my favorite novels. I wasn't wrong. Clarke's setting is dreamlike and mysterious, yet the story is an absolute page-turner. I love this book.

Most fans of Strange/Norrell may be puzzled by this book, but it is a really interesting reading experience if they throw aside any expectations. Very engaging once you immerse yourself in the House and Piranesi's world. I agree with others that it's best not to read any reviews before or during. Unexpected, unusual, memorable literary fiction with elements of fantasy.

This book is practically impossible to describe, except that it’s surreal and mysterious. I read it in one sitting because I, much like the very likable main character, needed to find out what had happened. There’s no easy ending here, but this book is worth it.

Definitely an original concept and well written novel. It reminded me of the Magus by John Fowles in that the main character is clearly being manipulated and can't really be trusted to understand or describe correctly what is happening to him. I enjoyed it but felt it dragged a little in the middle and then the conclusion felt a little rushed. I loved the description of all the statues and the different halls and the name Piranesi was a great visual clue as to what the setting might be like. Still, I am not sure it will find as wide an audience as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I would recommend it to patrons who like fiction where the reader feels a bit lost at times, like Gnomon by Nick Harkaway or Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

I wish I could say that I loved this novel as much as I loved Susanna Clarke's two previous publications, but I simply did not. I list both of her previous works in the top tier of my favorite books of my life, but I found this one to be less compelling than her earlier writing. I very much appreciated the labyrinthine unfolding of the story as it reflects the world-building within the novel, however, and it is a sensitive exploration of the psychological processes that occur after trauma, such as disorientation, and re-building one's identity. I can appreciate her impressive writing skill and artistry, even as I am not able to connect deeply to this particular novel.

An extraordinary work of fiction, narrated by the nameless person known for most of the book by the nickname Piranesi. It proposes a juncture between worlds in the form of an endless classical-architecture-style house full of a vast variety of marble statues, and with the climate of a northern ocean - clouds and fog at the top, birds flying through and nesting, and fish and shellfish coming in with the regular tides of ocean that sweep through the lower floors. Clarke describes this world in spare but compelling ways, and merely reading about the regularity of tides and Piranesi's daily life prompts a strange sort of calm for the reader. The book follows Piranesi's journey as he figures out how he came to be in the House, what he has forgotten or remembers from day to day, and what the only other person he ever sees wants of him. Just magical.

I’m guessing that most readers here already know of Susanna Clarke and her huge, extravagant, lush, wonderful, funny and tragic Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. And by now everyone probably knows Piranesi is different. It is, but it’s the same fantastic (in a literal and exuberant sense) mind at work.
We are reading the journal of a Person, a 30-something-year-old man, who lives alone in a cavernous dwelling of Halls and Vestibules, Staircases and Passages, that seem to go on forever. This mighty structure is swept by oceanic Tides, of which the narrator – called Piranesi – keeps careful track. The Halls are peopled by Statues without number, which Piranesi is cataloging, one by one. He loves them, speaks to them, and they help him. He is creating maps, and has memorized the dimensions and locations of every room he has visited – but he will never visit them all in his lifetime. He offers a chapter describing “All the people who have ever existed in the world,” and you cock an eyebrow and think, “Wait, seriously?” But… there are only fifteen. Himself, The Other, and thirteen corpses from days gone by, which he respectfully tends and shelters. Piranesi is alone, except for encounters with fish and birds, and The Other, who visits him to discuss “scientific research” on Tuesdays and Fridays for 55 minutes. This composes the entire World.
Or does it?
Clarke messes with you. If you are a Googler, you will discover that Huntley Palmers Family Circle is a popular brand of cookies in the 20th century UK, and the so-labeled red metal box is where the bones of Biscuit-Box Man reside. Occasionally Piranesi finds crisp packets scattered in a passageway, which irritates him. There is a place where he catches a whiff of petrol sometimes – how does he know what that even is? Where did he get the “heavy-gauge plastic” he uses when fishing? (The Other gave it to him, among other necessities.) So where are we? And when? Why is Piranesi alone? He doesn’t mind, really. He is gentle, thoughtful, extremely literal (there’s a trick to pull off as a writer, when your character lives in a completely visionary world), naïve but clever – there’s more than a bit of the savant about him, or “on the spectrum,” as we say now, with definitely odd social skills (when The Other utters an explicitly violent threat, Piranesi’s thought is: “This was rather unexpected.”)
You have to pay attention. Pay attention to the crumbs Clarke drops deftly by the way. Suggestions, hints: doesn’t this make you think, what if this is what’s going on? Doesn’t that remind you of this other thing? Ohhh, maybe he means that! Maybe? And who is this new Person who has Piranesi so confused, and why does he always harp on exactly what The Other is wearing on Tuesdays and Fridays? There is a list of books referred to in the journals, including titles by R.D. Laing, and notes about a mid-70s occult philosopher. I don’t think I’m spoiling to mention that the real-life Piranesi, an 18th century artist, was famous for a series of haunting etchings of towering, bizarre vaulted rooms known as Le Carceri d'Invenzione.
You have to be patient. Walk along with Piranesi, marvel at his wonderful Statues (including minotaurs) and the meanings he ascribes to them. A gorgeous encounter with an albatross fuels an exquisite imagining of his soul fusing with the splendor of the bird to create an Angel.
If you are attentive, if you are patient, you will understand things that Piranesi cannot, but eventually must. There are separations – violent or voluntary, and other fusions and reunions, otherness and connection. There is even a roomful of ravens with clattering wings.
Piranesi is a different animal, to be sure. But Clarke’s wondrous imagination, elegant writing, and tenderness for “Otherness” glows within.

Susanna Clarke and I don't seem to quite work together. While I initially enjoyed Dr. Strange and Mr. Norrell, it eventually got too long-winded and too styled for me and I didn't finish it. I did really enjoy the TV miniseries though!

This book, although it's not that long, was also too baroquely styled for me. I'm guessing this book has something to do with memory palaces or something similar, but the first chapters did not entice me. The main character seems to have amnesia (a pet peeve of mine as a cheat to keep the reader from knowing too much) and is trapped in a Palace. The Palace has Statues, and Water, and Moss, and other nouns that are also capitalized. It is seemingly infinite, and there's at least one other Person in the Maze/Palace that is likely going to be an Adversary, although our Amnesiac Main Character doesn't have a Clue yet.

Maybe it's the time that I'm trying to read in (COVID), but I don't want to mess around with an amnesiac main character in a symbolic maze and work through whatever intellectual puzzle and symbology that the author has decided is cool. Not right now, not for me.

Utterly unputdownable is the only way to describe this book. Susanna Clarke left me totally breathless with this gorgeous tale of modern day magic that echoes with the deeper, darker, older world of "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell." Piranesi, named I'm guessing for the Italian architect of fantastical prisons, lives in the House. The House provides food, shelter, and comfort in the form of endless rooms of beautiful and bizarre statues. Piranesi loves the house with a zealotry that borders on fanatical and if he remembers a life before he lived there it is only the barest hint of a memory, gone before it fully forms. There is only one other living person in this strange, silent world. The Other. The Other is a wise seeker of truth who longs to learn the secret power he knows is hidden in the House and he needs Piranesi's help to find it. Piranesi trusts him implicity, taking the Other's warnings about avoiding strangers at all costs and believing utterly in the value of the Other's quest for knowledge.

But if the House is the only world there is what is Piranesi to make of the scattered journal pages he finds in his own handwriting telling of world totally unlike the House? If strangers are dangerous and violent while does he feel such a longing to connect with the one who finds their way into the halls of the House? Where does the Other go when he is not in the House?

Told in Piranesi's sweet, innocent voice through the journals that he uses to chronicle his life the reader swiftly becomes comfortably lost in the halls of the House. It is effortless to simply relax into the dreamy, endless white halls with their beautiful, finely carved statues. The simplicity of Piranesi's life there is totally intoxicating. When that simplicity is ultimately disrupted it is nothing short of traumatic.

Clarke has woven a truly wonderful story here that left me shattered. Piranesi's journey to the truth about who he is and what has happened to him isn't just tragic because of some horrible crime done to him but because shattering his illusions about the house is like shattering the vestiges of a belief in god.

I LOVE Clarke's concept of magic. She writes with a fearless elegance that traipses along the wispy edges of ancient power long lost and at best deeply misunderstood by those who call themselves "experts" in wielding it. I love the bombastic blowhards she creates who think their scholarship and high IQ's somehow equip them to excavate the secrets of other worlds. Her bad guys aren't super spies with guns, they're thesis writing nerds who just want everyone to tell them how smart they are.

I love that her focus here isn't on the Strange's and Norell's (though this very much feels like their world albeit in modern times) but rather the men and women who get pulled into their orbit simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The collateral damage of a magic spell gone wrong if you will.

This is a beautiful, beautiful book about a world I would very much like to visit. There are vestiges of Narnia and Fionavar in the halls of the House and dashes of witty urban fantasy but Piranesi somehow feels like a vastly more ancient story. I urge you to walk the halls for yourself and lose yourself in the peace of Piranesi's world. This is the kind of story that reminds you why reading is to wonderful.

From the beginning of this surreal novel the reader feels as off-kilter as the first person narrator. Presented as journal entries, the narrative takes us inside the mind of Piranesi, an inhabitant of a house with infinite rooms, countless mythic statues, and tidal waters. He knows the only other person in this world as The Other, with whom he attempts to discover true knowledge in behalf of the house. With his sproud familiarity with the house and its statues, and an endless supply of fish to eat, Piranesi is content until he detects the possibility of another human in his world. Thanks to his journals and his meticulous indexing of his own writing, Piranesi gradually uncovers some truths about himself and his history.

This is an unusual novel set in an alternative universe about a young man who is a scientist keeping track of Piranesi's house. It's 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. This isn't my normal read and I'm sure I'll be in the minority with only 3 stars. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This was a lovely little surprise.

Piranesi is a young man who wanders the endless labyrinthine halls of his world, meticulously cataloguing the pattern of the tides and the statues he comes across. There are very few people in his world: 15 by his count, only two of which (himself and the Other, his fellow scientist and research companion) are still alive. The rest are bones, which Piranesi faithfully visits and offers tribute. As Piranesi ponders the existence of a sixteenth person, perhaps the person reading this book, the Other issues a warning to avoid them at all costs…

Clarke's writing is exquisite. While Piranesi's world would seem rather hellish to me under other circumstances, it's burnished with Piranesi's fondness for every last statue and albatross. Our protagonist's surprising combination of utter guilelessness and scientific precision is a breath of fresh air, and I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of similar books. It has some thematic commonalities with Donna Tartt's The Secret History but is otherwise entirely different. The end result is an utterly charming yet bizarre slice-of-life story that I will happily read again and again.

Highly recommended.

This book is similar to a spider's web. There are so many different portions to the web - if one piece is destroyed, the entire web is ruined. Clarke has spun a story that deserved contemplation. It's frustrating, confusing, glorious, and gorgeous. As much as I appreciate receiving a digital ARC, I can't wait to have this book in my hands in physical form. This is the type of book that deserves to have its pages flipped back and forth as the reader explores the story's mystery.