Every wall of the House (he uses an idiosyncratic system of capitalisation) is lined with marble statues. The writer of the journal is a man in his early thirties living in a seemingly infinite series of halls and vestibules he calls the House. It feels novel for these initially baffling phrases to feel so essential. Moreover this is watertight writing she doesn’t drop a thread. This is something that happens once every eight years.Ĭlarke seems to be playing with the wordiness of fantasy and science fiction writing, but she is also being deadly serious. When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of three Tides. Narrated as a series of journal entries, the book begins with some astonishing opening sentences: Piranesi adds another, but Clarke’s version feels definitive in its empathy, clarity and specificity. Narnia, Philip Pulman’s multiverse, David Mitchell’s “metanovel”, Hogwarts … English writing is full of people disappearing through portals into other worlds.
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