The best book I’ve read this year… Just brilliant. An entire world created and story told in such a small book. It makes me wonder how Clarke’s mind works… like a kaleidoscope, so colourful and complex and beautiful, how she can come up with such a clever story!

The book is written in first person, as journal entries by someone called Piranesi. Piranesi lives in a House, that is also his World, and in this House, there are many Halls and Vestibules (over nine thousand!) In each Hall, marble statues fill the Walls, each Hall with different statues never repeating. The House has 3 floors, the Upper Halls have Clouds and produce Rain, the Middle Halls have Life like birds, and the Lower Halls have the Seas and Tides that make a rhythmic crashing sound against the Walls and where fishes and sea creatures live. Piranesi lives in the House with one other person he calls The Other. In his entries, he talks about his activities in the House, from how he fishes for food, dries seaweed for twine, to how he seeks to document every statue in the House.

One day, there seems to be someone new in the House. Who are they, and what do they want? Who is Piranesi, where is he, has he been in the House his whole life? Why can’t he remember how he got here? 

I started the book not knowing what to expect at all, and the first few pages were indeed hard because of how odd the terminology of a whole other World is. But after a few pages I got the hang of it, and I just wanted to know more! I felt like I was being transported into this whole other World… grand and quiet and strange and exhilarating… I wanted to BE THERE! It’s like a hallucinatory dream, mysterious but also peaceful, and very captivating. I loved loved LOVED IT from start to finish!!!!!!!