HYPED & TRENDY – A SURREAL EXPERIENCE LIKE NO OTHER – “PIRANESI”

January 12, 2022 Mar

Welcome to another “Hyped & Trendy” report where I tell you about hyped books that certainly lived up to the hype, like “Piranesi“!

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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.

5 SALVADOR DALI STARS!
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**CW(*): Depression, anxiety, isolation, abandonment.

This was an incredible hallucination! The ultimate liminal space experience! I’m 100% sure this book is on its way to becoming a classic!
No matter what kind of books you read, genre, or topics, you GOTTA read this book!

Because chances are, you’ve never read a book quite like Piranesi, and never will. So, you should treat yourself to this incredibly unique experience. This is one of those books that go deep into the reader’s psyche and means a universe of entirely different things to everyone. There were moments I had to stop reading because I felt deeply moved: disturbed, uplifted, sad, happy; every paragraph had a different emotion!

The story is about this man, Piranesi, who lives in this absolutely surreal world, straight from a Salvador Dalí painting, because in this “World” there is this labyrinthic “House” that houses… ready?… an ocean.

Yup. I know. Crazy. Surreal.

When the story starts, The “House” in the “World”, is the only place Piranesi knows, and it is only inhabited by him and another man he calls “Other”. So, the House encompasses Piranesi’s entire reality, and he makes his life purpose of exploring and documenting it, especially the statues that line its walls and the stories they seem to tell. It is obvious how every element of the World and the House is of the utmost importance to Piranesi because everything is capitalized as he tells his story: The World, the House, the Walls, The Halls, the Other, etc.

Piranesi documents his life in the House so descriptively and beautifully that his story reads as both a scientific compendium of sorts and a magical grimoire. But, mostly, a total imagery feast!

This is a cross-gender book, but mystery is the main genre because it keeps you wondering the entire time! What are this “World” and this “House”? Who created it and why? Why is it infinite? What are the statues trying to say to Piranesi? Who is Piranesi, and who is “Other”? Why are they here? What is this story REALLY about?

As Piranesi continues to explore and interact with Other, he learns more about the House and about people who apparently used to live there, too, and he starts to question his reality as well, especially when he runs into new people who don’t live in the House and come visit from “somewhere else.”

Since the story is written in the first person POV, you are privy to his theories of all these mysteries, and they are…OH WOW! So simple but beautiful and profound! I LOVED Piranesi! He’s such a beautiful character!

But then the answers he finds about the TRUE nature of his reality… Let’s use just this word. BRUTAL.
I won’t spoil it for you! You HAVE to read this book and find out!
BUT, even if there were answers to all these mysteries, even if there was nothing else to this story… this story is meant to be read just because of its uniqueness and beauty!**

Share this magical House with Piranesi, marvel at what you will find as he does, and admire this world for what it is: a surreal masterpiece. You won’t regret the experience!
A favorite imagery quote:

In the early evening I went to the Eight Vestibule to fish in the Waters of the Lower Staircase. The beans of the Declining Sun shone through the Windows of the Lower Halls, striking the Surface of the Waves and making ripples of Light flow across the Ceiling of of the Staircase and over the face of the Statues.