Breakaway Books

Authored by Susanna Clarke; Published 2020; Fantasy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

Piranesi was a page-turning delight. Susanna Clarke masterfully built up the suspense in this novel, slowly revealing more and more of the nightmare the narrator is trapped in—by the time I got to the last third of the book, I didn’t want to put it down.

In Piranesi, we find the narrator living in a fantastical endless museum, full of both delights and deadly obstacles, with only one other inhabitant. When the narrator discovers his old journals, he starts to realize that everything is not as it seems. The reader is making the discoveries right along with the narrator: What is this museum? Can the narrator leave? How did he get here in the first place?

Among the highlights of the novel was the humor—unexpected but welcome, I found myself chuckling at the narrator’s interactions with the world around him, the labyrinthine museum. The narrator’s pure heart felt so soothing, a contrast to, well, pretty much everyone living in the real world. It made the book so much easier to read, like it was talking to a friend.

As the narrator begins to piece the mystery of the museum together, it began to feel like a horror novel to me. I’m normally not a fan of the genre, but I loved this. A satisfying fantasy/mystery is rare, and the tension that Clark managed to build was truly impressive. My only wish for this book was that I could have learned a little bit more about the connection between the house in which the narrator lives and the rest of the world. The concept is unique, and I wish I could have read a little more about it fleshed out. 

It’s a quick read, so grab this one for a weekend escape!