Piranesi's Figures

by Hannah Calder

"Daringly innovative story telling... A work of serious literary ambition and substantial achievement." — Vancouver Sun

"Reading Calder is to move through the world barefoot over asphalt, grass, sand and water. This is sensual, insightful writing." — Michael Turner, author of 8 X 10 and The Pornographer's Poem

PIRANESI'S FIGURES is a romp through the magnificent psychological ruins of at least two marriages and one attempt at child- rearing, and a gleefully reckless contortion of novelistic conventions, sexual practices, and family dynamics. As in her first novel, MORE HOUSE (New Star Books, 2009), Hannah Calder peers into hidden corners and under creaking beds with such relentless abandon that even her own characters bristle at her advances. The result is a dense witches-brew of storytelling, a feminist-tinged fairy-tale that drapes the dirtiest secrets of domestic wreckage and illicit love in fancy dress and commands them to twirl around for our amusement.

240 pages, Paperback

Published May 26, 2016

Reviews

[Patrik Sampler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a revelation. If you want a clear example of what I mean, read at least chapters Twenty-One through Twenty-Three. Piranesi's Figures is heavy on meta-narrative, to a lesser extent capital "S" Surrealism, also sex, and empathy for those who can't live easily in the world.... These are all brave things for a novel written and published in Canada in the 21st Century so far (but that's another topic). If I have a complaint, it's a very mundane one: it took me a while to get the various characters sorted out. 4.5/5

[Dave Bensette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daughter loved it!!