My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke F
It takes a very special book to earn an "F" grade from me. I usually don't waste my time on the books I dislike as much as this one. If it wasn't such a universally praised book, one that I was determined to discover the reason why for this praise, I would've DNF'ed it halfway through, since it was the most boring book I've ever read. However, I pushed on, skimming through it to the end in the forlorn hope of discovering the wonderfulness of it which all those reviewers assured me was present, but didn't want to say too much about it, for fear of giving away too much of it and spoiling it for readers.
Needless to say, I completely missed the proclaimed charm of this story. I sincerely am baffled by its acclaim. Was it all a mega-joke?
No doubt, as usual, it's on me. Perhaps I found this book so boring because, as I have mentioned several times before, I don't have a "mind's eye," which is to say I can't envision things in my mind. Elaborate descriptions do not build pictures in my mind. I have to believe that the elaborate descriptions in this book conjure up a grand vision in the minds of most readers gifted with the ability to construct mental pictures. Description comprises probably half of the words of this story. I kid you not. I suppose for fantasy readers, this is what was so wonderful about the story, since the story itself is frustrating and ultimately surprisingly mundane. The fact that I can't do so, meant that much of the charm of this book is lost on me. It became just a repetitive descriptions of places by a simple minded narrator, without context. I needed a map.
Another reason this book failed to work for me is that, despite being an artist and a writer, I have a certain practical streak in my makeup. Things in a story have to make some sort of sense for a story to work for me. As a result, one of the things I most dislike about science fiction and fantasy, is when the writer comes up with some fantastic, mind-blowing concept, untethered to any sort of reality, and then just runs with it, building a scaffolding of a story and characters around it, simply to flesh out this fantastical concept. I feel that's the case with this book. The setting and story are simply a way to dress up a vague metaphysical concept. As a result, I simply could not, for even one instant, suspend my disbelief in the setting of the story, even with the magical explanation of it in the text that tied this world to our real world. It made no sense to me, especially as it was represented. And as I said, we spend half of the book exploring this concept-inspired, non-sensical place which we are expected to believe actually exists alongside our everyday world. We're dealing with a portal fantasy here, folks. Sorry if that's a spoiler.
The next sore point for me, is the first person narrator. He is one of those unreliable narrators who has amnesia, so neither he, nor we, the reader, learn his real nature until the end of the story. Throughout the story he narrates the story with child-like naivety, describing every little (unimportant) thing and every action in minute, and tedious, detail. As he begins to discover new things as part of the plot, the reader soon comes to know more about is going on than the narrator due to his amnesia and naivety. Thus we are doomed to listen to him slowly figure out all the things we already have figured out, while trying not to yell "Get on with it!" to either him or the author.
And lastly, however imaginative the setting is, the writing, I found, to be, though detailed, flat and tedious in its presentation. I felt no spark of life in it. Years ago I read her other famous novel, Jonathan Strange & Norrell, and in my memory of it I seem to recall it was pretty dull reading as well. Colorless is the adjective I would apply to her writing. Elaborate, but dull and tedious, without any wit or charm. I not a fan of Susanna Clarke's writing.
So what about the story, you ask? Well, the narrator, known as Piranesi lives in a vast series of great halls that are filled with statues; endless miles and miles of these great halls. And statues. Some of the halls are flooded; seas and lakes. They have fish, and birds, and seaweed, but for some unexplained reason, no plants or trees or other animals, at least in the part of the halls Piranesi has explored. Likely because they would be inconvenient for the author if she had to have Piranesi dealing with lions, tigers, and bears. Oh My!
Piranesi spends his time - years - exploring and mapping these halls; the reader gets to know them quite well, as I said, half of the book is descriptions of them. Once a week he meets with the only other human (alive) in the halls that he knows of. This fellow is searching for some magical powers he believes are in these halls. This fellow brings familiar items from our world to give to Piranesi, items that Piranesi seems to recognize what they are, despite the fact that he has no memories of the mundane world that he came from. (Sorry, that's a spoiler.) All he remembers is his life in these halls where these things don't exist. But despite the fact that he is supposed to be very curious, exploring and mapping all these halls, his familiarity of these other world items and their origin never seems to strike his curiosity, or stir memories at all. Hard to believe.
Throughout the story we, along with Piranesi, gradually learn bits and pieces of his back story, mostly via notes that Piranesi himself had written in his collection of notebooks. The earliest entries, ones that he wrote before he came to live in the halls and forgot who he was, tell, or at least hint of the backstory. For some reason, likely the convenience of the author, he hadn't been curious enough over the years, to have gone back and read his older notebooks before, so it's all new to him. And, as I said, the reader is soon well ahead of him in figuring out what is going on.
None of the reviewers ever wanted to say anything about the story for fear of spoiling it. The truth is that, if you strip away all the halls and statues, the story of Piranesi is a very mundane one. A dark academia story. While it is my policy not to talk too much about the story, I probably have said more than most reviewers have already, so I'll leave it at that.
Piranesi has a 4.22 star rating on Goodreads with over 400,000 ratings, so people must like it a lot, or a whole lot of people are in on the joke - or afraid to admit they fell for it. I seem to be in the 1% of readers who don't get it's charm and would rate it 1 star. Even discounting my lack of appreciation for all the effort put into imaging this world, I have to say, I truly don't understand the appeal of this story. I guess I didn't fall for the joke.
A harsh review, I know, but then, I had to read, or at least skim-read, the whole damn thing searching for the magic. And finding none. It made me a bitter man.
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