Eerie as Heck!| Piranesi, Susanna Clarke | Book Review | Spoiler Free | Overbooked [CC]
welcome back to dead good book
reviews i’m judith it’s the day
after my birthday when i’m filming this
that’s why there are birthday cards up
nothing strange has happened it’s just time travel
i promise you’re watching another episode of
overbooked the series where i talk about every
single book on my shelf because i’m trapped in
a strange labyrinth and the other is telling me
it’s my life’s purpose why am i talking so weirdly
it’s because today’s book we’re talking
about is piranesi by susanna clarke
in frame in frame i want to give a quick shout out
to justine over i should read that who gifted me
this copy of this book for christmas of 2020 very
grateful you should always go check out her stuff
anyway i recommend her in almost every
single video but today she is the reason
that we are all here i also want to say that
i am filming this at 20 past four in february
so if the light just leaves us in this video
that’s how it is okay we’re just gonna have to
deal with it finally i am gonna keep this review
spoiler free as all over booked videos are as far
as i know i
in one of them hopefully but if you do want to
go in knowing absolutely nothing then click away
now because we’re going to get into some elements
of the plot that perhaps you might not like to
know if you want to preserve more of the mystery
of this book but come back when you finished and
let me know how it went piranesi is a standalone
fantasy book published by bloomsbury in 2020 and
it is the latest full book from author susanna
clarke who is a british author who’s probably best
known for writing jonathan strange and mr Norrel
the big chunky fantasy book i did read that in
2020 wasn’t the biggest fan of it she has another
collection of short stories which is called the
ladies of graced adieu which published in 2006
so we’re talking 14 years between that and her
latest book while i liked jonathan strange & mr
norrell i wasn’t a huge fan of the amount of
detail in it all the extra stuff which is kind
of pertinent to this review but also sort of isn’t
so i’m talking about this from the perspective of
someone who had read that previous book and went
in with some kind of preconceptions about susanna
clark’s writing i wanted to let you know about the
ideas i had going into this book which were i hope
this is more succinct this is a series of diary
entries written by a man called piranesi who is
kind of like a hermit living in this big enormous
sprawling house that he can’t get out of that’s
filled with random hallways filled with statuary
and also a kind of sea or multiple different
seas that are just flowing throughout the place
the whole time he spends the days mapping the
hallways in order to relay his findings to the
other the only other person alive in the house
but when chalk messages start to appear in some of
the vestibules he realizes that maybe he’s not as
alone as he thought he was there’s something else
going on here piranesi has to uncover the secrets
of this world that he lives in and at the same
time basically unpick everything he believed to be
true i don’t want to go into the plot in too much
more detail than that because i think it is a big
mystery thing that would wouldn’t it wouldn’t
be enjoyable if i just told you everything that
happens in this book suffice to say given what
i’ve just said i’m not going to make you wait
to hear whether i actually enjoyed this book
or not i really did was it more succinct
absolutely it was this is only 250 pages or
so compared to what a thousand however many
jonathan strange & mr norrell is but even just
considering there are fewer pages but this book
really does feel pared back it’s a very quite
often quite literal take on the world in these
diary entries it’s all reported and i think that
that makes for a book that you can really fill in
the gaps yourself which is something i was missing
in jonathan strange & mr norrell i think suzanna
clarke creates a main character that gives just
the right amount of information to the reader so
it still feels believable as a diary entry that
someone would write you know how some books you
read them and they are diaries and you think why
would anyone write this bit of world building in
a diary this would just be assumed as something
everyone would know and i think part of the
relationship that piranesi has with
the other means that it makes sense
for him to be writing all of this down in the way
that he does so yeah it feels realistic as much as
any fantasy feels realistic you know what i mean
if a book sells itself to me as a mystery it’d
better grab my attention and make me keep reading
and this book absolutely does that looking back
on it as a book and having now understood as much
of it as it lets you understand i think there are
some elements that are a little bit more drawn
out than they perhaps need to be but for the most
part it’s this glorious feeling of being two or
three steps ahead of the main character from the
very beginning it’s not something that’s revealed
later on you are always just a tiny bit ahead of
him and it’s really interesting to experience that
mystery yourself and then read another character
experiencing it atmosphere i say this in a lot
of videos but it’s my favorite thing in a book
i love a book that has good atmosphere and this
book is definitely one of those i really loved
the descriptions obviously we get from piranesi’s
perspective but i love the descriptions of all the
different hallways and all the different statuary
and the sort of ways that he distinguishes
different rooms is really interesting and the way
that he distinguishes different years as well you
know so the year that the book is written in is
the year that the albatross first came to the
first hallway or something like that i can find
it the year the albatross came to the southwestern
halls yeah like all of that is so evocative of
this kind of strange slightly eerie set apart
world that we’re in all of the detail we have and
all the detail that’s missing sets up this really
good juxtaposition of somebody who knows a lot
about some things and not a lot about others and
i find that really interesting and it makes for
a really creepy kind of spine tingling atmosphere
throughout most of the book and that’s why i think
this would make a really good read for around
about halloween i don’t know when you’re watching
this but hey it would make a good halloween read
if you like really solid resolutions of this
is what was going on this is how it worked
end then i don’t think you’ll get that from
this book i think it leaves too many things open
if that’s your preference personally i don’t mind
an open ending or even an open middle uh i’m kind
of cool with it but i think that depending on
your preference that might be something to take
into consideration if you’re planning on reading
this but equally there are some things that are
explained so if you are the kind of person who
prefers everything to be left completely wide open
equally it might not be for you it sort of sits
if the spectrum is everything explained to nothing
explained i would say it sits around about here
somewhere towards the not explained section but
not quite fully there i’m a happy medium person
so uh it suited me just fine i was thinking about
some things to compare this to and i think in
terms of this sort of strange not quite explained
atmosphere i wondered about erin morgenstern’s the
the starless sea it’s very hard to say but i think
that might be a good option i think also this
idea of uh sea indoors it just reminded me of that
that’s probably another thing that triggered that
but i do think that there are some similarities if
you’re interested in ya i thought about strange
the dreamer by laini taylor and thinking about
it now i can’t quite remember why but i think this
idea of being trapped and finding out things about
yourself that you weren’t necessarily expecting i
think that’s probably about as far as i can talk
about that without spoiling strange the dreamer
for you and then finally i this is maybe a bit of
a stretch and also it’s a book two in a series so
it’s not the same in terms of tone whatsoever but
in terms of the general something strange is going
on here and i can’t quite put my finger on what
harrow the ninth by tamsyn muir and i know it’s
the sequel and maybe i’m just recommending it
because it doesn’t make any sense to me but
yeah there’s something in there that kind of
audience being a little bit ahead of the
characters there’s something there final
thoughts i think that this is a book that would
suit a lot of people i think a lot of people
would enjoy it um i think that it covers a lot of
different ideas and it’s just good to read i did
listen to a clip of the audiobook when i was
trying to work out how to pronounce the title
and i really liked the narrator for that i have
no idea how the full audio book goes but i think
it would be beautiful to listen to in audio and
probably even more creepy maybe i don’t want to
do that but i think that it would suit a lot of
people and if you are thinking about reading it
i would say go for it it’s a good a good book
to read also if you were put off by jonathan
strange and mr norrell i will say this is a very
different book it still manages to capture that
kind of creepy atmosphere that the really in my
opinion the really good bits of that book had
i don’t think it’s as simple as saying uh this is
jonathan’s strange and mr norrell without all the
extra stuff in it because it’s really not by any
stretch of the imagination but it’s just tighter
writing and i really liked it comment below if
you have any more atmospheric recommendations
i’m always looking for them it could be the
next book that i say has atmosphere in spades
who knows somebody get me a spade to shovel all
of this atmosphere or something while you’re
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