Piranesi

I enjoyed Susanna Clarke's earlier massive and award-winning tome, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and so I wanted to read this well-reviewed newer book; this was my 2nd try and I did finish it. It is difficult to describe and the cruelty of The Other character is distressing. Piranesi himself is charming and engaging, if clearly naive/deluded. Here is the plot summary from the book jacket.

"Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known." 

As mentioned, reviews are uniformly positive.  From Library Journal: "Clarke's ... deftly written new novel is the diary of the main character...Clarke creates an immersive world that readers can almost believe exists." Booklist concludes their review with "in this spellbinding, occult puzzle of a fable, one begins to wonder if perhaps the reverence, kindness, and gratitude practiced by Clarke's enchanting and resilient hero aren't all the wisdom one truly needs."  Kirkus offers these closing remarks: "At the foundation of this story is an idea at least as old as Chaucer: Our world was once filled with magic, but the magic has drained away. Clarke imagines where all that magic goes when it leaves our world and what it would be like to be trapped in that place. Piranesi is a naif, and there’s much that readers understand before he does. But readers who accompany him as he learns to understand himself will see magic returning to our world. Weird and haunting and excellent."

And here are details offered in Publishers Weekly review. "Clarke wraps a twisty mystery inside a metaphysical fantasy in her extraordinary new novel... The story unfolds as journal entries written by the eponymous narrator, who, along with an enigmatic master known as the Other...inhabits the House, a vast, labyrinthine structure of statue-adorned halls and vestibules. So immense is the House that its many parts support their own internal climates, all of which Piranesi vividly describes... Meanwhile, the Other is pursuing the “Great and Secret Knowledge” of the ancients. After the Other worriedly asks Piranesi if he’s seen in the house a person they refer to as 16, Piranesi’s curiosity is piqued, and all the more so after the Other instructs him to hide. In their discussions about 16, it becomes increasingly clear the Other is gaslighting Piranesi about his memory, their relationship, and the reality they share. With great subtlety, Clarke gradually elaborates an explanatory backstory to her tale’s events and reveals sinister occult machinations that build to a crescendo of genuine horror. This superbly told tale is sure to be recognized as one of the year’s most inventive novels."

Since We Fell

I have been a fan of Dennis Lehane for some years, reading several of his books (e.g., World Gone By), but barely scratching the surface of his body of work, many of which have become movies (e.g., Mystic River, Shutter Island, Gone Baby Gone).

There are many positive reviews of this book: Library Journal ("Readers will enjoy going along for the ride in this engrossing story about love, deception, and marital commitment"), Booklist ("...this narrative vehicle never veers out of control, and when Lehane hits the afterburners in the last 50 pages, he produces one of crime fiction's most exciting and well-orchestrated finales rife with dramatic tension and buttressed by rich psychological interplay between the characters), and Publishers Weekly ("Set in contemporary Boston, this expertly wrought character study masquerading as a thriller from Edgar-winner Lehane ...features his first-ever female protagonist.)

But the review that came closest to my reaction was the review from the New York Times. They write "The novel begins with a string of joltingly different episodes from an author whose usual style is much more propulsively linear. The sequences are all parts of Rachel’s life, but that doesn’t initially glue them together; she is struggling to figure out who she is, and so are we. Only over time does the larger trajectory of “Since We Fell” become clear.It all makes much more sense in retrospect than it does as the book’s first chapters unfold. Here are some of its early developments: Rachel devotes herself to solving the mystery of her father. It’s complicated, and it leads the book into such unlikely areas as Luminism, the 19th-century style of American landscape painting....The father question is answered, and not in ways likely to improve Rachel’s mental state. Strong and smart as she is, Rachel needs a man in her life. She marries a producer named Sebastian, who works at the Boston TV station where she is a rising star. He’s irritable when Rachel endangers her career, since he cares mostly about her status....One on-air meltdown later, Rachel has been fired and is a public pariah.

Already subject to panic attacks, which are exacerbated by the horrors she saw in Haiti, Rachel stays in her apartment for 18 months. Sebastian drops out of her life. And it leads to Rachel becoming reacquainted with Mr. Right, Brian Delacroix, who she’d known casually and now looks at with new interest...Rachel falls gratefully into his arms, and they are married.Their marriage ushers in a string of wall-to-wall spoiler alerts. Suffice it to say that this second part of “Since We Fell” is sharply different from the first. Suddenly, he begins delivering nonstop suspense only loosely rooted in Rachel’s story and its foundations."

This very long and torturous journey left me largely unmoved, although the last part of the book does speed up and become more engaging. Kirkus, like many other reviewers had only positive things to say. "Don’t zoom through this latest entry in Lehane’s illustrious body of work. You’ll miss plenty of intrigue, intricacies, and emotional subtleties....What seems at the start to be an edgy psychological mystery seamlessly transforms into a crafty, ingenious tale of murder and deception—and a deeply resonant account of one woman’s effort to heal deep wounds that don’t easily show."

Two NIghts in Lisbon

This twisty mystery by Chris Pavone was chosen by my mystery book group and had me guessing until the end. And the ending has made me and others in my book group feel like we need to re-read the book to see how the author tricked us about so many things. Kirkus Reviews delivers an admirable intro duction to the plot and provokes potential readers' curiosity. They conclude by saying, "This high-stakes drama grabs your attention and doesn’t let go." Publishers Weekly likewise gushes that the book is a "superior, elegantly crafted yarn."  The New York Times is more positive about the author than the book itself and concludes with these comments about Pavone and his writing: "this smart, calculating author remains many notches above others in his field. He is worldly and inviting when it comes to the book’s mostly European settings. His book captures a vacation’s escapism even as its heroine feels walls closing in."