A review by dako
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

adventurous mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.25

Piranesi is the tale of a man trying to survives to the best of his abilities in a strange gigantic house full of halls floating in the sea in the middle of nowhere, totallu vulnerable to the elements. He lives with "the other", the only other human he has ever known.

The writing style is interesting. The book is essentially the thoughts of the first character in the first person. The writing is a bit distracting at first, as the main character capitalize nouns randomly, but you get used to it eventually. 

The plot is fairly slow paced in the beginning, but the mystery of the situation is enough to keep the reader hooked. The book becomes much more fast paced towards the middle-end of the book.

Interestingly, the main character has the advantage of having the body of an adult, but the naïveté of a child. This makes him more lovable; you can't help but be touched by the naive and loving way he sees the world and the Other, and how forgiving he is. You can't help but feel protective of him. It was hard to see him make bad decisions. The other characters however are total caricatures, but I don't think the book would have benefited that much from having more fleshed out secondary characters.

The story feels original, albeit fairly predictable. I wish it was more grounded in reality or that we'd have more of an explaination of the surreal parts.

The book stimulates thoughts. It raises multiple interesting points about trauma, what makes a person themselves, how experiences shape a person, how a victim respond to trauma and its relationship with its agressor, one's relationship to truth; and it does all that from an interesting angle I had not seen before.

I liked the book overall, but I think it was a tad bit overhyped. I would've loved a less predicteable story, but I think that the intellectual value of the book and the discussions it raises make it interesting nonetheless. Although I didn't love it ad much as I wanted to, I can recognize that it is undeniably a good, well-crafted book.