Three words: Eerie, nightmarish, otherworldly
Like the waves that crash around and among the mysterious House the protagonist inhabits, I quickly realized that I needed to let the opening pages of Piranesi simply wash over me. I found myself trying hard at first to keep track of the internal geography of the house (the numbered halls, the statues), but Susanna Clarke does a masterful job of cluing the reader into the fact that more is at play than what the narrator describes. Who is this mysterious Other, and how to explain his mysterious disappearance and reappearance in the House? What is the “shining device” he carries with him? The reader’s trust in the author is not misplaced when, at last, all is revealed. Bonus points for the Magician’s Nephew tie-ins (in the C.S. Lewis classic, the eponymous magician’s full name is Andrew Ketterly, a surname that comes into play later in Piranesi.)
Luke Stephens 