This was another audiobook listen for me as I was on my road trip this summer. I’d heard of Piranesi before, but had sort of avoided it, mostly because I have a problem where the more hyped up something is the more worried I get that I won’t enjoy it–but when I saw that the audiobook narrator is Chiwetel Ejiofor, I knew I had to give it a try. And I’m so glad I did! I thought this book was absolutely gorgeously written–the prose is so lush and the worldbuilding so rich and complex, and Susanna Clarke does a really masterful job of creating intrigue without being heavy-handed about the mystery of it all.
In a true masterwork of avoidance, I actually knew nothing about Piranesi before I started the audiobook, which meant that the things being revealed were indeed revelatory for me. It took quite a number of chapters before I began to realize that there were hints being dropped, and even more chapters after that before I started to piece the hints together into a coherent picture. I enjoyed being able to kind of play detective as a listener, even while Piranesi himself as a character still wasn’t picking up on what was going on.
If there were one thing that made me wish I was reading instead of listening, I think it might be the descriptions of the characters’ physical surroundings. I have aphantasia and don’t picture settings as I read, which means that the descriptions are pretty much all I have to go on when it comes to understanding how characters are oriented in space. The labyrinth is obviously a complicated and confusing place to be, and even Chiwetel Ejiofor’s voice couldn’t make it easier to understand the layout from spoken instruction, so I would have liked to be able to go back and read.
But in all other respects I think this was a fantastic audiobook! It was engaging and interesting, the plot moved reasonably fast without rushing by yet still allowed room for character growth and development, and the mystery of the circumstances was revealed gradually enough that the reader could follow along and piece things together too. Overall I’m really glad I finally got around to reading (listening to) this and I think I’ll have to read some more Susanna Clarke soon.