GSWS Feminist Book Club - January 2025
Piranesi
Susanna Clarke
Bloomsbury Publishing (2020)
Not your typical fantasy novel. It's not (really) a story of fairy tale creatures and monsters...more about "Piranesi's" relationship with the world and with himself. It's a look into the purity of his soul, which you sometimes think is mostly just naivety, but that turns out not to be the case. It's a fantastic and rapid read, and we found ourselves left with more questions than answers. Clarke lets the novel unfold like a mixture between a dream and a puzzle, slowly giving the reader more clues about what is happening. Some may lament the lack of ambiguity in the novel's conclusion - you get a complete picture of what's happened - but it fits Clarke's style from Jonathan Strange, where exposition is made part of the literary effect, not shied away from.
Average rate: 3.5/5