Pink Fiction Club

  Susanna Clarke’s ‘Piranesi’ has been on my list for a while now, but for one reason or another, I have not read it until recently. I had an idea that it was a beautifully written, but at times confusing novel. After reading it, I can confirm that this idea still holds true. If you had asked me to tell you what it is about, I could not. I could however inform you that this is one of the most human and beautifully written novels I have read in a while. The plot is confusing but ultimately, not the most important. I am sure I have not understood all the themes and messages Clarke weaved into her story, but I did thoroughly enjoy it. Piranesi, the main character and the narrator, lives in an impossibly large house with seemingly magical abilities. He is an expert on the house, masterfully keeping notes of its many rooms, statuses and the inhabitants, both dead and alive. The House houses an ocean (I did tell you it was impossibly large) and a huge part of Piranesi’s day is keeping tr...

I have discovered this novel the same way I discovered many others-through positive recommendations on social media, including goodreads. ‘The Silent Patient’ was cited as keeping readers in suspense and with an effective plot twist. I was able to prevent myself from reading any spoilers before reading the actual book, but I must say that I found it and the whole book in general so disappointing that I don’t think I would have cared anyway.  The narrator felt very much like ‘tips fedora’ nice guy and although there is a lot of talk about his extremely traumatizing childhood, he was so painful to read through I struggled not to skim through half of the novel. Alex Michaelides’s debut novel starts with the introduction of Alicia Berenson who is introduced as the murderer of her husband, Gabriel and who is now in a high security mental institution. Her silence about the bloody murder is notable, especially as she is a famous painter and her husband was a notable fashion photographer. ...