Piranesi

Wow, that was a ride. Honestly, the less you know about this book, the better. This short book follows a character named Piranesi who lives in a large, mysterious labyrinth with large statues everywhere called “The House”. The only other person in the House is The Other, who meets with Piranesi twice a week. The book is told from the perspective of Piranesi's journals. From there, I honestly think anything else is detrimental to know ahead of time.

I loved this book. The writing style is so evocative, the slow unraveling of the story makes you constantly want to turn the next page. I read it incredibly fast, I just couldn't put it down.

I had heard from a lot of people that this book was great and I was a little nervous to get to it. Fortunately, it delivered. I will definitely be rereading this book in the future, and I would recommend just about anybody give it a try. The beginning is a bit slow, but once the story settles in, you're hooked.

This book would get a full score except for the fact that it is quite mysterious, and I guessed a good portion of the mystery pretty early on. I think it was because I knew it was a mystery, so my brain threw out every possible suggestion and inevitably, one of them turned out to be mostly right. Still, I shouldn't have been able to guess; I'm not great at solving mysteries, haha.

As an aside, I don't see people mention very often that Clarke wrote this book while suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. It may be a short book, but it is a work of damn art, and laboring under those conditions makes it all the more impressive.

If you need a short book to get you out a reading slump, I HIGHLY recommend picking this one up!!