Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is a dreamlike mystery that unfolds like a rose: first the petals are tightly closed, but as they open one by one, a new flower is revealed. At the start, the protagonist, who narrates the book, thinks he knows everything about himself and the world he inhabits, but in the end discovers that much of what he knows is wrong.

The voice of the narrator will stay with me for a long, long time. In some ways, the narrator’s voice and the narrator’s relationship to the world remind me of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Slow Regard of Silent Things, because, while he conveys the wonder and beauty of the world, he knows at the same time of its traps and dangers. The narrator’s voice is so compelling, his descriptions so beautiful, that sometimes the plot fades into the background.

I won’t give away the plot of this book, which should be discovered by the reader as the petals of that flower falling gently open. Thus, there are many things that I can’t say, except that I liked it very much, and read it twice over for the pleasure of inhabiting the world that Clarke created.

The book raises questions about how places shape the people that inhabit them. Can one become a kind and noble person by living in a beautiful place? Does the world make the person… or is it the other way around? The book doesn’t try to answer these questions in the end, so the reader is left to puzzle them out on her own.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose beautiful, resonant voice swept me away.