Ah, I didn’t know you’d replied to my dumb comment! Really sorry.

I wonder if this is because “Piranesi” is shorter and so can do less. It does what it sets out to do, which is tell this particular plot, but it doesn’t get time to stretch its wings and become immersive.
Perhaps this is the whole problem.

I don’t think Clarke was attempting to write unfortunate stereotypes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she managed it without meaning to.
I don’t think Clarke is any kind of a bigot at all; I think she just wrote some slightly weird, thoughtless characterizations and didn’t bother getting a second opinion from pre-readers who belonged to the demographics she was trying to represent. It could happen to anybody, honestly — but the bar was so high because of JS&MN that I think I just expected her to be supernaturally aware of things she really has no actual insight into.

I actually love the thought that not-Piranesi/not-Matthew will return to the House one day for good; it feels like a positive thing for him to return, of his own free will, to the place that holds his heart.
Me, too!

while I like the idea of Piranesi/Matthew’s composite self, we barely know him; he’s introduced and then he’s gone. I would like it a lot more if we were given some more chapters for the composite self to bed down.
Very much this.

The second is that I read the version of the book with the extra interviews at the end; this meant that I didn’t realise that the final chapter was the final chapter.
I pre-ordered my ebook from Amazon (ugh; I know), and then stayed up for like twenty-six hours straight to read it after it downloaded right at bedtime (I’m an idiot). I don’t actually know if there are interviews at the end or not! Now I have to check.

In the meantime, things have happened with chicken legs this week, so hopefully there’ll be a food post before the year is out.
I just commented on the final chicken legs post, with my heart in my throat. Truly the end of an era, indeed. The best of times, the worst of times, the shallot juice, and the unsolved mystery of the tapioca flour. Sincerely a beautiful moment.

Thank you very much for the reply, and all the best to you & yours!

I’m really happy you enjoyed Piranesi! I wasn’t quite as fond of it, myself — I thought it was very interesting and weird and of course beautifully-written (it is Clarke we’re talking about), but some parts left me a little confused. Other things I can’t decide on; like, on the one hand, (in the US, at least) there’s such a terrible, racist history of black men being depicted as simple-minded and unintelligent and easy for white men to manipulate, and I thought there were echoes of that stereotype in Piranesi himself… but on the other hand, Piranesi could be seen as a child of the divine, and not “simple” so much as “sacred,” and that’s a very cool thing to relate to a black male character. So it’s a book I have complex and conflicted feelings about. I’ve read it about nine times, and I have a different reaction to it every time I finish it, lol.

And thematically you’ve got a lost historical world that has returned in the present, with the world around us developing meaning because of it. The birds are a writing in the sky if we only know how to read it.
Yes, this part 100%.

But from a first read, after the building building excitement of the rest of the book, the ending is a disappointment. The revelations are gone, the building tension is gone, and (hardest to bear) Piranesi is gone. It felt very melancholy. Perhaps it is meant to be a happy ending, but it doesn’t feel that way.
I really liked Piranesi’s “composite self” at the end; that he developed many layers of identity that inter-related to each other, not unlike the House itself. And I think we were supposed to feel at least a little melancholy about that — he does go and contact poor James Ritter, and offer to help him return to the House. I think the implication is that Sorensen/Piranesi will go back one day, too, and never return. Which is also melancholy!

I am so familiar with the ending of Strange and Norrell now that it is hard to remember that on a first read I found the ending a little lacklustre.
I wept so hard at the end of Strange & Norrell that I made myself ill. Or, actually, not at the “end” end — the part where Uskglass returns, Stephen leaves, the Gentleman is killed, and Arabella & Emma are disenchanted. The “end” end was just a tying-up of plot threads. I didn’t have such a visceral connection to Piranesi, though. In fact, I often struggled to have any connection with it at all. For all of its beauty and intrigue, it was just kind of there for me. I kept looking at various elements of the narrative at a distance, instead of getting involved “personally.” If that makes sense? I liked it, but I had problems loving it.

I still think it was one of the most interesting novels published in the last decade, and I would also recommend it to anybody who loves fiction. Very interesting to read your take on it! (I hope you review some other books here, too. I love your review posts almost as much as your FOOD POSTS.) Thank you for posting about it!!!