Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Published by Bloomsbury, 2020
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
I’m having a hard time organising my thoughts for this strange little novel. I found it utterly compelling to read, the setting that Clarke has created both rich and absorbing, but I didn’t find it as surprising or revelatory on a thematic level as most other readers seem to have done.
As many have opined, it’s probably best to head in knowing little about the plot (though, it’s also possible that being geared up for an inevitable twist set my hopes too high, and I would say the major details aren’t all too hard to determine). Suffice to say we follow Piranesi, who lives a near solitary existence in a mysterious flooded house, characterised by its endless labyrinthine halls, towering statues, and changing tides. He believes himself and one other with whom he has sporadic interactions to be the only living people to inhabit the world, but predictably, everything is not quite as it seems.
The book is written in the form of diary entries that detail Piranesi’s various endeavours to explore and understand this world. Fortunately, he is both interesting and likable as a protagonist, and Clarke’s prose makes it a pleasure to spend time inside Piranesi’s head as we piece together the narrative’s puzzle pieces alongside him.
Though never landing any kind of emotional punch for me, the book does ruminate on the likes of loneliness, trauma response, memory, and the nature of identity. I took it primarily as an exploration of the idea that we can make peace with our place in the world, and whether or not it is possible to find contentment in ignorance.
That said, the book isn’t as impenetrably cerebral as I feared it would be based on people’s deliberately ambiguous reviews (it is tough to discuss without spoilers). Yes, there are depths to be mined and many literary references to be picked apart if you so wish, but on a sentence-by-sentence level, Piranesi is also simply an enjoyable read. Carried by a singular setting that is brought to life vividly on the page, and a protagonist who is easy to root for, I’m glad I picked this up, even if just for the truly unique reading experience it presents.
With her strikingly contemporary voice, Lowe breathes new life into the sonnet, an otherwise archaic form of poetry. Switching seamlessly between poignancy and humour, the collection is primarily concerned with youth; exploring experiences from Lowe’s own childhood, that of her son, and of the students she mentored throughout her decade long teaching career. She dives into the intersection of class, race, and gender that exemplifies inner-city London; her identity as a white passing half English, half Chinese/Jamaican woman offering a unique perspective.
This collection focusses almost entirely on the tragic loss of the poet’s father. Schminkey lays bare the visceral indignity of a slow, painful death. Having always had a complicated relationship with their father (an alcoholic with a violent streak), the poems do an excellent job of exploring the fraught middle-ground between grief and resentment, posing interestingly nuanced questions: Are sympathy and care familial rights, or should they have to be earned? Does death absolve someone of their mistakes? Is it wrong to feel relieved when someone finally lets go?
When a book has been hugely hyped, venturing into it always comes with the fear it will disappoint, but The Vanishing Half more than exceeded my high expectations.
Summing up the very complex character dynamic in this novel in a succinct way is tricky, so I’ll simply borrow the opening lines of the blurb: A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.
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Being Ishiguro’s first release since he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, this was always going to generate a lot of buzz, drawing in casual readers and hardened critics alike. Thankfully, Klara and the Sun is more than capable of pleasing this broad readership spectrum: It has great commercial appeal thanks to its pertinent themes and readability, while Ishiguro’s signature insight into the human condition and subtle emotional delivery heighten the experience.
Despite the largely rave reviews that have been pouring in, and how much I admired it myself, I can see why this novel might not work for everyone. It’s slow and ruminative with next to no plot beyond what we’re told in the synopsis, and it deliberately denies readers answers to the big questions it poses. Because of these qualities, I must confess it took me some time to get drawn in, worrying initially that the narrative would remain too emotionally distant and lacking a sense of drive. But around the half-way point, once the focus shifted firmly onto the book’s primary thematic concerns, it completely won me round.
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This posthumous collection, sensitively translated by the poet’s own daughter, was the last project Dev Sen completed before her death in 2019. The pieces are wide-reaching in theme, with some particularly evocative lines throughout that reflect the landscape of India, and the differing worldview of men and women due to cultural roles. Beyond this, there’s a strong focus on womanhood in general, and Dev Sen’s experiences as a mother, as well as pieces on love, loss, language, memory, and so on.
Set across one relentlessly rainy day on a remote Scottish holiday park, Summerwater captures a microcosm of contemporary British society, in all its post-Brexit tension. Each of the twelve chapters follows the perspective of a different resident of the park, giving us a snapshot into their life; the thoughts and worries that occupy their mind.
An air of foreboding hangs over this almost fable-like tale, which looks at the community response to the sudden appearance of 32 seemingly feral children in the subtropical town of San Cristobal. Seeming to speak their own language, and growing increasingly hostile towards the locals, tensions rise as the divide between “us” and “them” grows ever wider.
