Reviews tagging 'Vomit'

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

82 reviews

billyjepma's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

You know that feeling you get when reading a book, the sense that usually creeps on you and whispers that you’re experiencing something you’re going to remember? Yeah, that’s what it felt like reading this.

This is a book that pulls from a lot of brilliant sources and ideas and rearranges them in new, unique, and endlessly fascinating ways. It’s a puzzle box of rewarding twists and turns that manages to be frightening in the ideas it offers but gently mysterious in its delivery of them. It’s the kind of story I loved the experience of reading, which usually correlates with books that end up becoming lasting favorites.

I will absolutely be forcing everyone I know to read this.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Gaslighting, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Confinement, Kidnapping, and Mental illness

Minor: Child death, Stalking, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Vomit, and Injury/Injury detail

leduyhxxng's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No

5.0

The writings and narrative voice in <i>Piranesi</i> put you in a particular state of mind, one that feels religious and melancholic. Yet it does not overdo anything to the effect. If I could smash a book, this is it. Everything about this piece of literature is perfect—I rest my case.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Dementia, Slavery, Kidnapping, Toxic friendship, Death, Gaslighting, Confinement, and Mental illness

Moderate: Vomit and Gun violence

Minor: Blood, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

atlas_oliver's review

challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement and Gaslighting

Moderate: Death, Gun violence, and Toxic friendship

Minor: Excrement and Vomit

nickel_'s review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Confinement, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Gaslighting, and Gun violence

Moderate: Abandonment, Death, and Violence

Minor: Vomit, Blood, and Murder

k_aro's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful mysterious reflective relaxing slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Honestly, on some level I feel a little guilty giving this so languidly a 5-star review; it's not really the kind of book that exists for stars or whatever, but I still feel like it'd be a loss to not talk about it as such.

What an incredible book! I love slow explorations of a space, and this felt so widely built (even though there's still so much left unsaid and basically left up to interpretation) that it felt fulfilling even if not all the answers were stated. I guess it kind of reminds me of that encyclopedia full of stuff that doesn't exist that's supposed to replicate the feeling of looking through an encyclopedia as a kid for the first time.

The tension is also nicely built, and it doesn't really concern itself with three-way twists and distracting flashes, just a really nice story that follows through in its soft magic systems on what it talks about.

I also enjoyed the occasional flashes of second-person narration; that said, I'm kind of just in love with second-person narration as a device, so I'm super biased in this regard (the other 5* review I have up is for a largely second-person narrated memoir!)

While I'm a little unsatisfied by the unspecificity of why Ketterley did what he did, I think to some level that's not "the point" (so to speak)—he's so obsessed with something that is functionally dead that rationality is truly, on some level, false.

Anyway, I'd also like to take a little bit to talk about the lovely meditation on death and obsessions with death, not just in regards to dead people but to dead ideas, concepts, language, etc. So much of our life is living, breathing, that when something dies it inevitably takes up space; but as Ketterley demonstrates, this obsession with death is actually something quite grotesque, demanding answers out of something that has already departed this world.

Of course, that's neither here nor there; Arne-Sayles is also pretty interesting in his own right, though I'm not really sure I like how his gayness is positioned as just part of him being transgressive, but I also think I like it? I don't know, I guess it kind of evokes questions about the transgressiveness of being queer in general, or maybe transgressiveness as a whole (maybe even hearkening back to that one Carmen Maria Machado essay about being queer and fat). He's definitely an interesting character!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Confinement, Gaslighting, Kidnapping, Torture, Abandonment, Emotional abuse, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Addiction, Vomit, and Gun violence

While these look like a lot of intense content warnings, I will say that usually most of the things written above are not processed, written about, extrapolated on as abuse in itself (so to speak). The experience of the main character, while I do not want to invalidate as the things shown above, are not processed as such, partially owing to the fact that the main character does not quite process emotions or traumas in the same way you or I would; so rather than them being fact in and of themself, they are the textual reading extrapolated.

woweewhoa's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Read this as my first book of 2022 and was really surprised. Its a story about a House that is Alive and Haunted(by the same thing that make it Alive). It is doing things with motives so far away from our own perception of things, that its a character in its own right.
This book is written Very well and the way it unweaves the mystery is expertly done revealing things to both the reader and our Protagonist at different times which got be really excited and at the edge of my seat to read more.
Its a short read, and after it establishes itself in the first/part of the second part, it goes for the races. I paced myself through this book through the past week, and that felt like a good course of action. The ending of each part kinda felt like the ending on a tv show.
This kinda got away from me, but if you want to read a story thought a limited first person view about A Place that is Alive, people trying to interact with that place in so many different ways, that ends up with a very interesting view of how identity exists and is formed, I Definitely recommend this book. Glad I started the new year with it :^)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting

Moderate: Gun violence, Violence, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Confinement, Vomit, Suicide, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

octopus_farmer's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

It was a novel about place more than anything else, and I see how its descriptions capture the imagination of everyone. It reminded me a bit of the Zoom the Cat’s picture books, in the mix of architecture and nature. I liked the plot fine but it was the character and place i liked most. I wish to know more about

Raphael.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Confinement and Dementia

Minor: Vomit and Violence

marisa_n's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Gaslighting, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Vomit

Minor: Death

claudiamacpherson's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I’ve always said that I like happy endings, and happy stories in general, but that’s not it exactly. Rather, I like my stories hopeful—if the overall message is about how sad and pointless life is, I absolutely do not want it. The premise of Piranesi is pretty bleak, and I would argue that it fits firmly in the category of dark academia, but Piranesi is one of the most stunningly kind and hopeful characters I have ever had the pleasure to read about. 

This book is pretty light on action and heavy on description, which I loved and felt that it built the tension really well. I’ve always liked stories where the setting becomes one of the characters, and the House was such a beautiful example of this. I loved Piranesi’s relationship with the House and with nature in general. He believes so firmly that he is loved and will be taken care of by them.

Happy ending meter (no specific spoilers, just the vibe):

Bittersweet. With a story like this, there could be no truly happy ending, but this ending was about as good as it could get.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting and Confinement

Moderate: Kidnapping, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, and Death

Minor: Fire/Fire injury, Vomit, Blood, Child death, Gun violence, and Injury/Injury detail

anger566's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship and Kidnapping

Moderate: Abandonment and Gun violence

Minor: Vomit and Death

Piranesi was "kidnapped"/tricked and trapped in the labyrinth "rooms" where he starts to lose his memory of his real life. The other abandons Piranesi while he goes back to the "real world". The other fires a gun in an attempt to hurt Piranesi and Raphael. Piranesi describes bringing offers to the dead (skeletons) in the labyrinth.