Author: Susannah Clarke
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Paperback
Staff Picks! Pema says…
Pensive Piranesi lives practically alone in a big Escher’s castle, tending to it with loving care. He’s a scientist, measuring realities and discovering empirical truths, always from a place of deep curiosity. This book moves very slowly and methodically until the end when everything happens very fast. I don’t want to say anymore, but I just really urge you to read it because it’s definitely my best book of the year and everybody I’ve recc’d it to has loved it also. And I want to point to Susanna Clarke’s acceptance speech for Women’s Prize for Fiction, where Clarke said never thought she’d be well enough to write the book and wanted to share hope with those ‘incapacitated by long illness’ (Clarke has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). I found that very poignant and personally affecting, so thank you Susanna <3