Books › Piranesi
Women's Prize for Fiction 2021
Piranesi
400 pages
A hypnotic, puzzle-box journal of a beautiful, flooded labyrinth that slowly reveals a heartbreaking mystery.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like wandering through a beautiful, flooded museum in a dream. It begins with a gentle, almost meandering exploration of an infinite, statue-lined labyrinth, guided by a narrator whose earnest reverence for his isolated world is both charming and deeply melancholic. The prose is hypnotic and meticulous, utilizing peculiar capitalizations that make the environment feel mythic and alive. As you read, the atmosphere shifts from serene wonder to a creeping, dread-soaked realization that something is terribly wrong. It is a puzzle-box of a story that requires patience, rewarding the reader with a bittersweet emotional crescendo. It will utterly delight those who love atmospheric, slow-burn mysteries and do not mind being gently disoriented before the breathtaking truth snaps into focus.
- Mood
- dreamlike
- ethereal
- haunting
- wondrous
- melancholic
- Tone
- earnest
- reverent
- naive
- inquisitive
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- isolation and solitude · memory and identity · innocence vs. corruption · the nature of reality · finding beauty in confinement
- The writing
- The prose is meticulous and hypnotic, utilizing peculiar capitalizations that give the text the feel of an antique explorer's journal.
- The arc
- Begins in a state of peaceful, naive wonder, descends into confusion and betrayal, and resolves into a bittersweet, expanded understanding of reality.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love atmospheric, puzzle-box narratives and do not mind being gently disoriented before the pieces fall into place.
Content notes
- gaslighting
- isolation
- memory loss
- manipulation
- confinement
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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