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Piranesi susanna clarke pdf11/7/2023 Its narrator, though deprived of both company and reliable memories, seems curiously content with his lot. And where Jonathan Strange was populous and richly polyphonic, Piranesi is a tenebrous study in solitude. All that has been cast aside here, in favour of a prose that is economical almost to the point of austerity. This is, for a start, a much shorter novel than its predecessor, whose doorstopper proportions were a byproduct of its garrulous and vastly digressive style. Some distinguishing features are immediately apparent. Does it announce an author boldly reclaiming her territory, or one emerging from her own shadow? Well, it’s complicated. And, given the long silence that followed, even non-devotees might wonder what to expect of this new novel. The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a collection of stories published in 2006, was politely received by critics but didn’t quite rekindle the fervour of devotees. Yet even as her imitators proliferated, she herself returned only briefly to her antic and ornate parallel Regency. Like Hilary Mantel, Clarke made the very notion of genre seem quaint. Infusing “great tradition” verisimilitude with the imaginative radicalism of Ursula Le Guin, it gave rise to what might be called magical archaism, a fictional strain that has since become widespread. ![]() But its lingering influence – perhaps all the more notable for her long quiescence – has not been fully appreciated. She is hardly obscure, of course her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, became a worldwide bestseller and was given a plush TV adaptation by the BBC. Susanna Clarke is a writer who has never quite been given her due.
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