Susanna Clarke has a chronic fatigue syndrome. She was diagnosed right after Norrell. She talks a lot about her own isolation and how she processed it. I think at one point she stopped thinking of herself as the woman she was before and even as a writer. So that concept of Piranesi viewing Matthew as another self who is dead but lives within seems like it was the same for Clarke. That’s why I think the last part was necessary. It speaks to Clarke’s journey as she published this book. The person she was during her isolation and the person she was before all converging into the woman she is today. That’s super poignant to me. Matthew’s loss is Susanna Clarke’s. 17 years of silence that we can never get back. I like that Piranesi doesn’t explicitly explore it because well, what can Piranesi do? It’s so far beyond his grasp. He is grounded in the present and his current circumstances- just like when we are unwell. Totally loved this era of lit fic.
I really appreciate that you all are willing to voice your dissenting opinions. It makes this podcast a more interesting and mature review and analysis on books than many other booktubers. That said, you're also super entertaining.
It's almost like at the end of the story the main character was able to do what Arne-Sayles originally set out to do, that is bring back to our world something we had lost. He was able to merge the two mind-sets, Matthew's modern one and Piranesi's ancient one, and as a result the House is beginning to seep through to our world in places, or perhaps only in some precious moments. I'd say it was worth it.
I think Piranesi is a book where explaining the plot wouldn't do it justice. There's so much vibe in it, and it's exquisitely written. There were moments where i was in awe over how she described something. I love the whole vibe of the book. Its something that cant easily be replicated. Also, i love how different and imaginative is it. When i first started listening to the audiobook, i had to rewind it several times because i wasnt sure if i had heard it correctly. There were ocean tides inside a house?! Amazing!
The NERVES that I felt when I saw this video title lol - I love Piranesi so much! I read it last summer and recently followed it up a few months ago by reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I also adored. For me, Clarke is the absolute sweet spot where gorgeous prose and tight writing meet genuinely creative fantasy premises. I’m relieved to hear from the opening minutes that you all had a good experience with it and can’t wait to listen to your thoughts further when the workday is over!
I love Piranesi!!! Love it! Literally drove an hour just to get a hard cover of it when it first came out. I love, love , love it. So shocked to see you guys doing literary fiction.
One of my favorite books ever. After finishing, I flipped to page one and read it again! Last sentence punched! And I think Piranesi had reached enlightened in the House! Before he was an academic snob, so he'd already gone through an arch, and the last act was in essence the last nail on his old persona.
Where can i cast my vote for more literary fiction? This book was such a delight, i was so relieved our utterly adorable hosts connected with it as well.
Hi! It took me a while to listen to this one because I was so worried that none of you will like it and, at the same time, didn't found a time to listen with all the care and detail to your experiences with this book. This book has been a revelation to me and I'm glad to see that it has been enjoyable to you all.
Ah, I thought that Susanna Clarke's name sounded familiar! I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell years ago and I'll definitely say that it's one of those books that sticks in your memory. I really appreciate it when authors leave things to the reader's interpretation.
oh i loved this book so much and I'm really happy to see how much you guys enjoyed it!!! i can honestly say I've never read anything quite like it (yet?) and i was instantly reeled in because of how unique it feels. i really need to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell too! thanks for the review!!!
Speaking of video games, you should absolutely check out Control or Alan Wake 2 by Remedy Entertainment because those games have a lot in common with the themes of Piranesi that it's kind of spooky (especially Control which is set inside a place called The Oldest House and was partly inspired by The Southern Reach Trilogy). In fact it's because those games are so open-ended that I don't mind Piranesi being open-ended too because I think if Clarke added more "body" to the work, I think the book would have lost some of its appeal as you suggested and also gone against the idea of the House being a nexus of old or lost ideas.
God damn it William with that winx club slander! I've had piranesi on my tbr for ages but didn't pick it up bc i got burned by lit fic one too many times. I agree with Will there, too many men thinking their pretentious thoughts need to be shared. But I'll give this one a go
Its, ok the first seasons are the right spot of fantasy tropes played fun?! And the witches are iconic. I mean winx club the better parts know what they are.
I think this book was a tip of a hat to portal fantasy especially Narnia. The other doorways a homage to the many pools in the Magician's nephew and Mr Tumnus is on the cover for crying out loud.
I think it would have been possible to have him morn the loss of Mathew without it being overt or dwelling on it--he could have been shown going through stages of grief and feeling this emptiness that he couldn't explain, and there could have been a dramatic irony where the audience knows what he's feeling but he doesn't because he's never experienced it before. In other words, he could have experienced the loss of his past life and identity but it could have been filtered through his child-like simplicity. Like a dog whose owner dies; the dog doesn't understand what death is and that humans aren't immortal, but it knows it doesn't see its owner anymore and that some new strange person is taking care of them when he misses his original owner.
You guys reviewing a non-magic book and liking it means i must now leave to read it too! The last recs i took from you were Temeraire (gorgeous, perfect, my everything) and Seven Deaths of Evelyn whatsherface (interesting, confusing, too damn long) so i trust you guys What i've heard so far makes this sound very thought provoking so i'm looking forward
Hello! Been binge watching a lot of your videos. I was wondering if you all had considered reading the blurb if the books you review before deep diving into the podcast? I find myself having to look up the book halfway through your show bc I don't know what you're talking about.
i wonder if i'm the only one that was disappointed that the story connected with our world. i wanted this strange house that was the world, to BE the world. and if it connected back to another world or reality, that is be another alien one. i felt a letdown that its a human from our world that went to another place and forgot. i wanted the whole thing to be other.
When I first started listening to the audio book. I thought it was going to turn out that the earth went through some sort of disaster and that everything man-made was calcified, so all the statues were actually people once and the giant building he was in was some derelict skyscraper that was particularly submerged by the sea. It didn’t take long for me to realize that wasn’t it
I was very disappointed by this, and to this day, refuse to acknowledge that everything Piranesi experienced in the house was strictly "real". I think a lot of ot was him trapped inside with his own mind, and that "real" things happening are interpretations of events that did unfold. For example his study of certain persons is why they come to confront him inside the house, and I acknowledge that he might have been abducted and held prisoner in some way, but we don't know that it happened as it seems in the book. If it did, it seems rather random and strange that 16 even knew how to get there, but if he was trapped on himself for some reason it makes more sense that he could be found and helped. Idk, I just prefer the book as an allegory, and reality isn't allowed to barge in and ruin it.
Exactly! That's what I wanted from this book, magic, mystery, an atmospheric other world, it did it so perfectly at the beginning and then just ended on - here is the real world and it's really shitty.
@@stephanie0311 exactly! there are so few books fully committed, not to just an alt version of our world but with magic, but to a fully diff world. where there is not only magic but even the basic rules of reality are different. and here we had a world that was a house and a house the size of a world, with all the nature and things, inside the walls of the house. how wonderful is that?!
Not me downloading the Catalan edition on kindle and forgetting Catalan is a language😅 At best I know a few words in Spanish... the two most important being, no comprende. Thankfully it was just the sample and not the whole book😶 Also, your podcast really is the best. Your dynamic is wonderful and the insights you bring are amazing and I always learn something new about stories and ways to look at them.
I'm with Will 😂 i went through a literary phase when i was a kid and first started writing. But these days my current style is like genre bit written like literature (??) I like the introspection and exploration of themes in lit but I prefer it with a genre and plot to have the setting and delivery 😅😅
I have finally finished Piranesi and am now BACK to finish the video (it really is not in your interests to make me interested in the book because i am a SLOWWWW reader) p.s this book is nowhere near a short story and is a perfectly normal length you guys just read a LOT of fantasy 😂
I enjoyed this book, but it just didn't grab me. One of those situations where I can't pinpoint anything wrong with it, but I didn't fall in love Edit: I was spoiled before reading it so that probably affected my experience hearing people's theories Edit 2: I don't think he could begin to grapple with the existence of Mathew while he was still in the house
Watching everyone love this book makes me feel so fucking dumb as rocks. I was so bored fucking bored listening to the damn audiobook. An felt so angry after. So i dnfd it. I dk why i didnt just like it!!🤬
Not watched recall, its a good entertaining scifi movie with arnold schwarzenegger, and maria hasnt read it? He is pretty good in it. And i think the starship trouper regisseur. Ok its fun and good. and wonderfully campy. Not the reboot, that is just no.
While I understand the sentiment of not wanting to read someon's identity crisis...... I think a lot of people are in the denial period that comes just before an identity crisis. I say whatever can trigger people to move onto that phase toward something like self awareness is great. Also 'dishy' is the worst verbage i have ever heard.
Susanna Clarke has a chronic fatigue syndrome. She was diagnosed right after Norrell. She talks a lot about her own isolation and how she processed it. I think at one point she stopped thinking of herself as the woman she was before and even as a writer. So that concept of Piranesi viewing Matthew as another self who is dead but lives within seems like it was the same for Clarke. That’s why I think the last part was necessary. It speaks to Clarke’s journey as she published this book. The person she was during her isolation and the person she was before all converging into the woman she is today. That’s super poignant to me.
Matthew’s loss is Susanna Clarke’s. 17 years of silence that we can never get back. I like that Piranesi doesn’t explicitly explore it because well, what can Piranesi do? It’s so far beyond his grasp. He is grounded in the present and his current circumstances- just like when we are unwell.
Totally loved this era of lit fic.
Fugue.
I think the general consensus is that the bookclub enjoyed this book and glad we could discuss a overall high quality piece of literature together 😊
I'm so relieved that you guys liked it (usually I enjoy a roast) I love the way Susanna Clarke write its just so mundane odd that it evens out so well
I really appreciate that you all are willing to voice your dissenting opinions. It makes this podcast a more interesting and mature review and analysis on books than many other booktubers. That said, you're also super entertaining.
I love that moment where you as the reader go "oh he has a smartphone." Pause. "*Oh. He has a smartphone.*"
It's almost like at the end of the story the main character was able to do what Arne-Sayles originally set out to do, that is bring back to our world something we had lost. He was able to merge the two mind-sets, Matthew's modern one and Piranesi's ancient one, and as a result the House is beginning to seep through to our world in places, or perhaps only in some precious moments. I'd say it was worth it.
I think Piranesi is a book where explaining the plot wouldn't do it justice. There's so much vibe in it, and it's exquisitely written. There were moments where i was in awe over how she described something. I love the whole vibe of the book. Its something that cant easily be replicated.
Also, i love how different and imaginative is it. When i first started listening to the audiobook, i had to rewind it several times because i wasnt sure if i had heard it correctly. There were ocean tides inside a house?! Amazing!
The NERVES that I felt when I saw this video title lol - I love Piranesi so much! I read it last summer and recently followed it up a few months ago by reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I also adored. For me, Clarke is the absolute sweet spot where gorgeous prose and tight writing meet genuinely creative fantasy premises. I’m relieved to hear from the opening minutes that you all had a good experience with it and can’t wait to listen to your thoughts further when the workday is over!
I love Piranesi!!! Love it! Literally drove an hour just to get a hard cover of it when it first came out. I love, love , love it. So shocked to see you guys doing literary fiction.
My Fridays do not start until I see your reviews.
One of my favorite books ever. After finishing, I flipped to page one and read it again!
Last sentence punched!
And I think Piranesi had reached enlightened in the House! Before he was an academic snob, so he'd already gone through an arch, and the last act was in essence the last nail on his old persona.
Where can i cast my vote for more literary fiction? This book was such a delight, i was so relieved our utterly adorable hosts connected with it as well.
*ruggedly handsome.
--Will
@@unresolvedtextualtension Of course, pardon me my benevolent overlord. I shall make certain to pay homage to your rugged handsomeness from now on.
Omg don’t feed his ego -Kt
😂😂
Hi! It took me a while to listen to this one because I was so worried that none of you will like it and, at the same time, didn't found a time to listen with all the care and detail to your experiences with this book. This book has been a revelation to me and I'm glad to see that it has been enjoyable to you all.
57:10 I always had the impression that the other was being careful about what he gives Peranesi in case it triggers his memories
My only qualm is the albatross never came back
Ah, I thought that Susanna Clarke's name sounded familiar! I read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell years ago and I'll definitely say that it's one of those books that sticks in your memory. I really appreciate it when authors leave things to the reader's interpretation.
oh i loved this book so much and I'm really happy to see how much you guys enjoyed it!!! i can honestly say I've never read anything quite like it (yet?) and i was instantly reeled in because of how unique it feels. i really need to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell too! thanks for the review!!!
Okay Maria, lovely cohost of the best podcast on TH-cam. I must know where I did you get that too because it’s GORGEOUS!!!!
Speaking of video games, you should absolutely check out Control or Alan Wake 2 by Remedy Entertainment because those games have a lot in common with the themes of Piranesi that it's kind of spooky (especially Control which is set inside a place called The Oldest House and was partly inspired by The Southern Reach Trilogy).
In fact it's because those games are so open-ended that I don't mind Piranesi being open-ended too because I think if Clarke added more "body" to the work, I think the book would have lost some of its appeal as you suggested and also gone against the idea of the House being a nexus of old or lost ideas.
I unreservedly loved "Piranesi".
God damn it William with that winx club slander!
I've had piranesi on my tbr for ages but didn't pick it up bc i got burned by lit fic one too many times. I agree with Will there, too many men thinking their pretentious thoughts need to be shared. But I'll give this one a go
Its, ok the first seasons are the right spot of fantasy tropes played fun?! And the witches are iconic. I mean winx club the better parts know what they are.
JS&MN felt like Dickens. Piranesi felt like Borges. I cant wait for her next book to feel like a grad school textbook.
I think this book was a tip of a hat to portal fantasy especially Narnia. The other doorways a homage to the many pools in the Magician's nephew and Mr Tumnus is on the cover for crying out loud.
That ephemeral book that you were talking about is Will's favourite - Song of Achilles :)
I think it would have been possible to have him morn the loss of Mathew without it being overt or dwelling on it--he could have been shown going through stages of grief and feeling this emptiness that he couldn't explain, and there could have been a dramatic irony where the audience knows what he's feeling but he doesn't because he's never experienced it before. In other words, he could have experienced the loss of his past life and identity but it could have been filtered through his child-like simplicity. Like a dog whose owner dies; the dog doesn't understand what death is and that humans aren't immortal, but it knows it doesn't see its owner anymore and that some new strange person is taking care of them when he misses his original owner.
I was anxious the entire time I was reading this. Didn’t like it, but I want to hear what you all thought.
You guys reviewing a non-magic book and liking it means i must now leave to read it too! The last recs i took from you were Temeraire (gorgeous, perfect, my everything) and Seven Deaths of Evelyn whatsherface (interesting, confusing, too damn long) so i trust you guys
What i've heard so far makes this sound very thought provoking so i'm looking forward
Hello! Been binge watching a lot of your videos. I was wondering if you all had considered reading the blurb if the books you review before deep diving into the podcast?
I find myself having to look up the book halfway through your show bc I don't know what you're talking about.
Shout out to the audiobook narrator! 👍
side note: maria i love ur top!!
i wonder if i'm the only one that was disappointed that the story connected with our world. i wanted this strange house that was the world, to BE the world. and if it connected back to another world or reality, that is be another alien one. i felt a letdown that its a human from our world that went to another place and forgot. i wanted the whole thing to be other.
When I first started listening to the audio book. I thought it was going to turn out that the earth went through some sort of disaster and that everything man-made was calcified, so all the statues were actually people once and the giant building he was in was some derelict skyscraper that was particularly submerged by the sea. It didn’t take long for me to realize that wasn’t it
I was very disappointed by this, and to this day, refuse to acknowledge that everything Piranesi experienced in the house was strictly "real". I think a lot of ot was him trapped inside with his own mind, and that "real" things happening are interpretations of events that did unfold. For example his study of certain persons is why they come to confront him inside the house, and I acknowledge that he might have been abducted and held prisoner in some way, but we don't know that it happened as it seems in the book. If it did, it seems rather random and strange that 16 even knew how to get there, but if he was trapped on himself for some reason it makes more sense that he could be found and helped. Idk, I just prefer the book as an allegory, and reality isn't allowed to barge in and ruin it.
Exactly! That's what I wanted from this book, magic, mystery, an atmospheric other world, it did it so perfectly at the beginning and then just ended on - here is the real world and it's really shitty.
@@stephanie0311 exactly! there are so few books fully committed, not to just an alt version of our world but with magic, but to a fully diff world. where there is not only magic but even the basic rules of reality are different. and here we had a world that was a house and a house the size of a world, with all the nature and things, inside the walls of the house. how wonderful is that?!
@@lesyablackbird It was lovely! I want my quality escapism, not a reality gut punch 😂
Not me downloading the Catalan edition on kindle and forgetting Catalan is a language😅 At best I know a few words in Spanish... the two most important being, no comprende.
Thankfully it was just the sample and not the whole book😶
Also, your podcast really is the best. Your dynamic is wonderful and the insights you bring are amazing and I always learn something new about stories and ways to look at them.
I love Myst video-games, specially the second one
Do you guys offer beta reading/ARC reading services?
Katie does! You can email her at betareadingbykatie at gmail.com
@@unresolvedtextualtension thank you!
I'm with Will 😂 i went through a literary phase when i was a kid and first started writing. But these days my current style is like genre bit written like literature (??) I like the introspection and exploration of themes in lit but I prefer it with a genre and plot to have the setting and delivery 😅😅
My daughter hounded me for a year to read this. :D
I have finally finished Piranesi and am now BACK to finish the video (it really is not in your interests to make me interested in the book because i am a SLOWWWW reader)
p.s this book is nowhere near a short story and is a perfectly normal length you guys just read a LOT of fantasy 😂
I enjoyed this book, but it just didn't grab me. One of those situations where I can't pinpoint anything wrong with it, but I didn't fall in love
Edit: I was spoiled before reading it so that probably affected my experience hearing people's theories
Edit 2: I don't think he could begin to grapple with the existence of Mathew while he was still in the house
Am I tripping, didn’t you guys already do this one?
Nope they didn't! :D
You're right. I checked my old emails. It was the live stream
Watching everyone love this book makes me feel so fucking dumb as rocks. I was so bored fucking bored listening to the damn audiobook. An felt so angry after. So i dnfd it. I dk why i didnt just like it!!🤬
To each their own 🙂 If you don't vibe with Piranesi's exploration of the house, I get why this book would be a rather dull read.
@@llindberg194 it’s just frustrating because i still see the genius in it.
I almost DNF’d in part 2 because I was extremely bored. Glad I finished it though.
I hate it too
@@chowinsnowlol
Even though I loved the book I still think that the ending is a little too long. I could have done without 16 being overly explained.
Not watched recall, its a good entertaining scifi movie with arnold schwarzenegger, and maria hasnt read it? He is pretty good in it. And i think the starship trouper regisseur. Ok its fun and good. and wonderfully campy.
Not the reboot, that is just no.
While I understand the sentiment of not wanting to read someon's identity crisis...... I think a lot of people are in the denial period that comes just before an identity crisis. I say whatever can trigger people to move onto that phase toward something like self awareness is great. Also 'dishy' is the worst verbage i have ever heard.