Piranesi (although he does not believe this to be his name) lives in the House, a vast and endless labyrinth of vestibules and halls lined by statues, where the upper levels are shrouded by clouds and whose lower levels are engulfed by the tides. He spends his days fishing, documenting the House in his journals, and bringing tributes to the dead, of which there are thirteen. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he is visited by the Other, a man seeking to find a Great and Secret knowledge and the only other living inhabitant of the House.
It becomes obvious early on that not everything is as it appears. The Other wears a new set of clothing on every visit, while Piranesi is stuck with the rags on his back; he brings a strange silver device, of which Piranesi has never seen the likes before; and the World of the House is littered with obscure rubbish.
Piranesi is a bit of a mystery, in more ways than one. It is hard to say in which genre it should be found; yes, it is set in a highly fantastical setting, but the events of the novel unravel like a strange mystery. Piranesi is a very unreliable narrator. He appears to forget things that have happened to him in the past and uses his own invented measurements to document the passage of time (I’m not sure how many more times I could face reading the phrase “entry for the whatever day of the whatever month in the year in which the albatross came to the South-Western Halls”). Also, for a book that sits at around 250 pages long, it takes almost 100 pages to get going; the writing is lyrical and descriptive, but nothing really happens for the first half of the book.
I was looking forward to this book - the writing style was intriguing and the plot was giving me Greek myth vibes, but unfortunately I was left feeling underwhelmed and a bit disappointed. That’s not to say it’s not a good book, once it gets going, but it just feels like it takes almost as long to get there as it does for Piranesi to explore the House.
It becomes obvious early on that not everything is as it appears. The Other wears a new set of clothing on every visit, while Piranesi is stuck with the rags on his back; he brings a strange silver device, of which Piranesi has never seen the likes before; and the World of the House is littered with obscure rubbish.
Piranesi is a bit of a mystery, in more ways than one. It is hard to say in which genre it should be found; yes, it is set in a highly fantastical setting, but the events of the novel unravel like a strange mystery. Piranesi is a very unreliable narrator. He appears to forget things that have happened to him in the past and uses his own invented measurements to document the passage of time (I’m not sure how many more times I could face reading the phrase “entry for the whatever day of the whatever month in the year in which the albatross came to the South-Western Halls”). Also, for a book that sits at around 250 pages long, it takes almost 100 pages to get going; the writing is lyrical and descriptive, but nothing really happens for the first half of the book.
I was looking forward to this book - the writing style was intriguing and the plot was giving me Greek myth vibes, but unfortunately I was left feeling underwhelmed and a bit disappointed. That’s not to say it’s not a good book, once it gets going, but it just feels like it takes almost as long to get there as it does for Piranesi to explore the House.