Book · 2020
Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke
A man alone in an endless house of statues and tides slowly realizes he used to have a different name.
What does Reddit think of Piranesi?
r/Fantasy and r/suggestmeabook agree on very little across genre debates, but Piranesi is one of the few titles both keep recommending without hedging. One r/Fantasy thread (↑437) describes 'the timelessness of the story' as the thing that stuck; another (↑399) just says 'Very good!' and moves on. r/suggestmeabook's framing runs closer to the literary shelf than the fantasy one: one list (↑421) puts Piranesi alongside Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, and Flannery O'Connor, not alongside genre fantasy at all. The 'passed by mostly unnoticed' comment (↑434) reads like it's from the book's first year, before the volume here existed, and specifically praises Chiwetel Ejiofor's audiobook narration. r/booksuggestions and r/printSF show up too, in the thousands of mentions apiece, but none of their excerpts are displayed here. The Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell comparison comes up more than once, always as Susanna Clarke's other, much longer book.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · isolation inside an infinite house
- · the House as a character in its own right
- · identity erased and slowly recovered
- · literary fiction shelved as fantasy
Common praise
- + The 'timelessness' comment in r/Fantasy (↑437) is the closest thing to a shared reaction across threads.
- + r/suggestmeabook keeps putting it on lists with Atwood and Morrison instead of the usual genre fantasy comps.
- + The audiobook narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor gets singled out as 'top quality stuff' in one high-voted comment.
Common criticism
- − Reddit still routes newcomers to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell first, treating this as the smaller, easier follow-up.
- − Most of the praise on display is short and declarative, like 'Very good!', not the kind of comment that explains what actually works.
- − It surfaces mostly inside big multi-book recommendation lists, getting a line instead of a thread of its own.
Who it's for
Come to it wanting Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell's atmosphere without the eight-hundred-page commitment. If your usual recommendation threads are r/suggestmeabook lists that mix Atwood, Morrison, and Clarke together, you already read this kind of book. Don't expect a fantasy in the genre-shelf sense: a House, tides, statues, and a narrator who has forgotten his own name stand in for swords and magic systems. Grab the audiobook if you want the version Reddit specifically calls out, narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
- r/suggestmeabook 7,223
- r/Fantasy 3,266
- r/booksuggestions 2,075
- r/printSF 594
- r/horrorlit 312
- r/TrueLit 117
- r/YAlit 56
- r/RomanceBooks 9
Which Reddit comments matter for Piranesi?
The most relevant excerpts across the subreddits where this book is mentioned — opinionated, argued takes first, then top-upvoted mentions. Click through to read the full thread.
“Literary fantasy ABSOLUTELY exists, as does literary sci-fi and literary horror. However, you probably wouldn't want a fantasy War and Peace, since that book is a slog about how much it annoyed Tolstoy that Russian people wanted to be French. Anyways. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a stunnin…
“Stick to modern era sci-fi fantasy. I think you'll find a lot of today's best authors in genre fiction grew up in the 90's-00's on YA books. You can see the inspiration but get more "oomf" from the writing. *The Bone Shard Daughter* by Andrea Stewart features a cool fantasy setting inspired by Po…
“I read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and couldn’t escape the timelessness of the story
“Piranesi was one of the most interesting novels last year and has passed by mostly unnoticed, I doubt it has a waitlist at the library. The audiobook is narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor and is top quality stuff!
“I suspect that for the Hugo's at least, it's a combination of **who votes**, and **who writes** the things those voters like. I was shocked to go through the Hugo votes and see that the shortlist is determined by **1093** nominating voters. That is a tiny number of voters for an award that gets so …
“Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Very good!)
“The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle 🧡 (Also from what others have mentioned, LOTR, The Goblin Emperor, and Piranesi, the latter two of which I both discovered during covid and helped a lot in that strange time)
“For me it was Piranesi. Not "classic" fantasy but it totally had a grip on me. It's also stand-alone and a pretty short read so I absolutely recommend it to anyone.
“I recently read (popular book on here) >!Piranesi by Susanna Clarke!< and realized it fit the 'unreliable narrator' setup in a really interesting way. If you start reading it in the mindset of reading a fantasy book, you take the narrator at his word, like "oh this is how the world works, this is a …
“I'm only part way through, but Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. A very dreamlike quality to it, it's very unusual, and I have been riveted from the first words.
“Susanna Clarke's *Piranesi* would be a great choice here - it's short, beautifully written, and certainly contains a lot to talk about....
“Piranesi. Start reading the book knowing as little as you can, and then it almost reads like a puzzle, where you slowly piece together what's going on through the skewed view of a not very reliable narrator
“I think Piranesi by Susanna Clarke does this really well.
“I feel like if I hadn't read Piranesi, this post would make me less likely, not more likely, to read it
“I liked Piranesi, but I think I was expecting some sort of profound reading experience based on what people were saying and I didn't really get that
Convinced? Pick up Piranesi
Readers also mention
All books like Piranesi →Books that share discussion threads with Piranesi — counted from the comments, not curated.
Guides featuring Piranesi
Ranked best-of lists and editorial guides where this book's tracked mentions place it.
Piranesi — frequently asked
Is Piranesi similar to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell?+
Same author, different scale. r/suggestmeabook and r/Fantasy discuss them as separate reading experiences: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is the long, footnoted alternate history, and Piranesi is a slim, disorienting first-person account of a man alone in an infinite house. Threads pointing fans from one to the other flag the length difference directly, not just tone.
Is the Piranesi audiobook worth it?+
Yes, per the one audiobook-specific comment displayed here. A high-voted r/suggestmeabook post (↑434) calls it 'top quality stuff,' crediting narrator Chiwetel Ejiofor by name. That's the only audiobook praise in this data, but it's unhedged.
Is Piranesi a fantasy novel or literary fiction?+
Reddit doesn't settle this, and that split is the interesting part. r/Fantasy claims it outright, one comment (↑399) rating it 'Very good!' inside a genre-fantasy list. A separate r/suggestmeabook thread (↑421) groups it with Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, and Flannery O'Connor instead, authors nobody shelves as genre fantasy.
Did Piranesi get overlooked when it came out?+
One r/suggestmeabook comment (↑434) says exactly that: it 'passed by mostly unnoticed' despite being 'one of the most interesting novels' the commenter had read that year. Mention volume across r/Fantasy and r/suggestmeabook grew considerably in the years after, well past that early framing.