When I saw the movie “Inception” I was especially drawn to a scene where the main character and his wife had created a world within their dreams. The world was represented as a huge empty city slowly disintegrating as the ocean pounded at the edges. They lived there for years while in a dream. Maybe some people saw loneliness in that huge empty city, but I liked the emptiness, and felt the call to explore.
This book by Susanna Clarke reminded me a lot of that part of the movie. The book starts off with a profound feeling of disorientation and confusion for the reader – and we have to trust the author to tell the story their way. In this case it is worth it to keep reading.
There are at first many questions, and then there is the character of Piranesi, who is wonderfully earnest and innocent and self-sufficient. We watch his life and his environment and gradually we learn more. The writing of the setting is beautiful, and the relatively short novel moves at a quicker pace. When a mystery develops I was completely absorbed, and in the end I didn’t want to leave the world that the writer had created.
There are countless ways to write a book and tell a story. How you may start, finish, create, destroy – there is no need to stick to a formula. The writer of this book clearly did something completely new and I was fascinated. There are no rules with books, and this particular book was a powerful reminder of that.
The next book to read is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.
