Susanna Clarke‘s Piranesi (2020) is a quirky, engaging novel.
Part whodunnit, part meditation on mental health, the novel follows its protagonist through an alternate space, a massive mansion containing a nearly infinite network of rooms, situated by a shattered seaside.
The protagonist discovers many of the twists and turns of the whodunnit along with the reader, making it harder to summarize without giving much away. There is a gateway between this alternate space and “the real world,” and the heart of the novel beats around who passes between and what their motivations are.
It is a testament to Clarke’s skill that the narrative perspective succeeds: the protagonist is clearly troubled, if not damaged, and Clarke does a fantastic job balancing what they know and don’t know with information only privy to the reader. It’s a fine line–reveal too little and the reader is frustrated; reveal too much and the dramatic tension wavers.
I think your tolerance for mystery will determine a lot of your enjoyment of the book: I found figuring it out quite engaging, and the final turns–which may strike some as overly optimistic–instead struck me as a sweet solution to the story, placing the book firmly in the camp that argues that there is, indeed, a way back from very dark times.
If Clarke’s name rings a bell, her earlier, hugely successful novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, was a decently converted Netflix series a few years ago. To her credit, while equally inventive, Piranesi is a strikingly different book, in tone, outlook, and content.