I know I am several years late to the party, but what a great novel! I can see why it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and got all the accolades it did. So for of those of you who missed it during the hype and wondered if it it’s good, it definitely is!

It’s very hard to describe what happens without spoiling the whole novel. But it’s a bit of a fantasy-mystery, if I were to describe it’s genre. We start with Piranesi in the House, with infinite rooms with infinite statues (or what seems to be infinite), going about his day. Then as we progress through the novel, you really see that everything is both exactly as it seems to be but also no what it seems to be. SO CRYPTIC, THANKS.

But it’s so interesting. The main character is entirely likeable and lovely, you feel his joy and his terror, but mostly his love and reverence for the ‘House’. I really love the resolution of his character arc at the end of the novel as well. I could see how it could have been very dissatisfying if it had a ‘happy’ resolution (happy in the sense of things being all wrapped up, but it is left in a more messy, and yet satisfying state).

There aren’t even that man characters, basically four, with the others alluded to as part of the mystery. But even though there isn’t a huge amount of people, the story is just engaging, and as it unfolds, you are compelled to just keep reading. I whipped through it in one afternoon. Easy, enjoyable, effortless reading but with such a satisfying feeling after. How did Susanna Clark’s brain come up with this book. It’s impossibly wonderful.