A review by bluejayreads
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

4.0

I almost didn't pick this up because of the author. At one point her book *Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell* was the ONLY thing available to do and I still couldn't finish it. But *Piranesi* is only a quarter of the length of that book, and the concept was intriguing, so I gave it a shot. And I'm glad I did, because it's the kind of bizarre almost-nonsensical story that I very much enjoy. I love the setting o the infinite house with weird statues and indoor oceans. I enjoyed the protagonist living there, examining the house with a semi-scientific mindset that often makes the leap into the nearly religious. I even enjoyed how the memory problems made the protagonist almost childlike in that he didn't see how dark the story was even though it was obvious to me, the reader. It was very short, barely long enough to be coherent but not nearly long enough to make sense. I didn't get the sense that there's some kind of other meaning or metaphor, but I almost feel like there has to be one because otherwise it's mostly pointless. But even if it is pointless, it's the kind of off-kilter pointlessness that I enjoy.