Rating: 5/5
Piranesi is One of the most beautiful books I have read in my entire life. The plot is imaginative and yet so arcane in its setting – not to say the evocative language and gorgeous flow of prose – it just ticked all my boxes. It’s hard describing this book without saying too much really, but I’ll try.
The protagonist is the sole occupant of a seemingly endless mansion in which the sea comes and goes with its tides. Halls upon halls, rooms upon rooms, contain mysteries, strange statues, and even old skeletons. The protagonist is sometimes visited by a mysterious person, but he doesn’t live here. They don’t know how long they have been here, what is this place, what is outside. They believe this house to be the entire world. But the perception is shattered once cryptic writings begin to appear in the oft-flooded halls, and in trying to solve the mystery of the writings, the protagonist wades even deeper into a dangerous history that may hold the key to their own forgotten past.
I could not give it anything less than five stars, because I haven’t quite read anything like it before. It explored solitude, pain, trauma, and the endless soul-searching humans are doomed to perform their entire life so deeply and may I say, kindly? More than the subject or the story, it was the deep empathy and sorrow etched between the lines that endeared this book to me.
If you are looking for a plot-driven, well-defined, and evenly-paced story, this is perhaps not for you. If you are sad and a little lost, like me, if you ever longed to be seen and understood, well then this might just be your cup of tea.
View all my reviews on Goodreads.
In Other Words 