Verity, Colleen Hoover
Well, as you can see, I finally decided to see what all the hype is about. After being recommended Verity by a friend and then the very next day seeing it randomly in a Moroccan bookshop, I figured it was a sign. It was hard not to reach such a fast-paced novel in a day or two, and the only reason it took me longer than that was some Moroccan wedding festivities. 😉 Verity’s plot is intriguing as well: a novelist who likes to remain under the radar is hired to finish the last books in an extremely well-known series after the author was injured in a car crash and left in a coma. Said novelist goes to the author’s house to read through her notes and discovers that she gets along rather well with the author’s husband. However, after a few creepy incidents with the author, and offhand remarks made by the couple’s son, as well as an unpublished memoir written by the author in which devastating secrets are revealed, the novelist is ready to get out of there. And of course the ending is a huge plot twist. While certainly an entertaining read, Hoover’s writing leaves a lot to be desired, utilizing what could be called cheap literary techniques and simple prose. Safe to say that’s her only novel I’ll be digging into any time soon.
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
Piranesi won the Women’s Prize in 2021, and as is often the case, one can almost immediately understand why. It is Clarke’s second novel and her first in more than 15 years, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Piranesi is a man in his mid 30s who lives in a large and majestic house, surrounded by marble statues and a great many halls and chambers and antechambers—more than 1,000 at his last count. His days are busy; he fishes, mends his belongings, describes the house, and of course notes everything down in his journal. He meets twice a week with The Other, the only other human being he knows to be alive, for scientific rendezvous. What becomes immediately clear is that Piranesi, who also states that that is not his real name, or at least he doesn’t think so, is innocent, maybe even naïve, and that The Other is not to be trusted. In the midst of Piranesi’s innocuous and somewhat charming inner monologue, messages began to be left for him that leave him unnerved and questioning who he is, where he is, and if the reality he is currently experiencing is indeed his real reality, or something that he is actually being subjected to.