Piranesi
SUSANNA CLARKE
(BLOOMSBURY, 272 PP, £14.99)
Tablet bookshop price £13.49 • Tel 020 7799 4064

A youngish man wanders through vast, echoing halls in a deserted palace beside a nameless sea, dwarfed by colossal statues and listening out for the sepulchral booming of tides surging in and crashing against the walls.

At the start of this book, Susanna Clarke conjures up a bewitching but disturbing dream world. But if the prospect of living alone in a vast half-submerged palace might sound terrifying to most, it doesn’t to the main character.