Piranesi
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.
Stats for nerds
44recommend
65mentions
55people
2021–2026years
80% recommend17% neutral3% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Right now, "The Lord", by Romano Guardini, a large collection of homilies covering the whole life of Christ. Obviously, this is a Catholic text.
Also, "Heaven on Earh", by Emma Wells, about nine or ten Gothic Cathedrals (mostly the history of their building and preservation). A bit too plain for my taste but includes interesting facts and anecdotes.
Finished recently:
-Flowers for Algernon, which I liked a lot.
-Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke, so beautiful and surprising.
-The Great Gatsby, which I had not read yet and which I have loved reading.
- I too am on DCC; I wonder why I like it, but I do. Strangely, one of the things it reminds me of, is the Malazan-Book-of-the-fallen series, in spite of how different they are. I was/have been on the 'book that wouldnt burn' series; I still have to read the final third book. Ironically, I have not yet finished that series because I dread it; the author is a little too good at writing truly loathable antagonists, and at the same time reading him, you have learned he cares little for plot armor ('if he dies, he dies', sigh.) Other than that, Piranesi by Susanne Clarke; I have also gotten her earlier book, but not gotten far into it yet.
DCC is strangely hypocritical - a massive commercial success where we the readers revel-wallow in the graphic suffering of the fictive protagonists/victims, and author & co are making truckloads of profits, precisely on the kinds of sheenanigans the books on the surface critisize :-). It is also a bit ironic, that the books/Carl critisize fascism, while at the same time, Carl is on a kind of one-man fascist/tyrant purging the existing elite, with summary and graphic executions. Sigh :-)
- I try to read fiction and non fiction in parallel, so my current pairing is How Asia Works by Joe Studwell and Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Enjoying both so far!
Other books I’ve enjoyed recently:
The Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft - I read Endurance by Alfred Lansing last year so it was fun having a real Antarctic adventure in my mind while reading it.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy - I actually started this a couple of years ago and quit part way through deciding I couldn’t put myself through it anymore. I kept thinking about it though, until I finally picked it back up and finished it this summer. Horrifying, but quite a masterpiece.
If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky - I was about a year late to the party on this, but it still holds up. I would recommend it.
The Infinity Machine by Sebastian Malaby - Excellent! Fascinating seeing a glimpse inside of the companies currently eating the world.
- I've been reading more than usual this year, have found it profoundly rewarding, and recommend it as an antidote to social media and news fixation to anyone who will listen to me.
A few of my favorite reads so far this year:
- The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones
- Angel Down, Daniel Kraus
- Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
- Between Two Fires, Christopher Buehlman
- The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow
- The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy
- Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher
- The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett
- The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead
- Piranesi has my vote for "ideal book", at least of that genre. Not a word is wasted. It fills out beautiful scenes by slowly lowering abstractions into them. It unfolds a dreamy, cerebral story. You meet likable characters transcending the paradigm. There’s even a gun, kicked around in a parking lot if that checks any boxes for you. Did I mention the baby albatrosses?
- I haven't yet read the last few ones because I found the Aztec ones underwhelming. The Calculating Stars to A Desolation Called Peace was when I started feeling they were not so strong and decided I'd go read prior years instead. But I suppose the vagaries of 'winner' vs. shortlist probably take this. It is true that all those others you're talking about are much stronger. I do think that The Ninefox Gambit, The Fifth Season, The Three Body Problem are all just as strong as the ones you've mentioned.
Having read Network Effect and compared it to Piranesi, the two seem simply leagues apart. Perhaps the real thing here is that I'm over-indexing on taste instead of some object measure of quality. Piranesi was otherworldly in the way of Strange and Norrell but Network Effect was Yet Another Story in comparison.
And it's true what you say. Some of the past winners were also relatively weak. Downbelow Station seemed incomplete though I think Neuromancer was unbelievable.
It's just that when I went back and just picked old winners to read it felt like banger after banger after banger. The one where I only remember Kallikantzaros or Lord of Light or Dune or The Left Hand of Darkness. Ringworld I could see people being put off by, but it had this whole thing with the ringworld and the trifold symmetry thing and all that.
Then again, everything that comes now has to avoid everything that came prior, sort of O(n) problem. You can't be new when much has been written.
