Short Stories: The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke illustrated by Victoria Sawdon

I'm taking a brief break from the usual format of Short Stories, to take a look at the new Susanna Clarke story, The Wood a Midwinter, illustrated by Victoria Sawdon.

Title: The Wood at Midwinter
Series: n/a
Author/Illustrator: Susanna Clarke; Victoria Sawdon
Source/Format: Purchased; Hardcover
More Details: Fantasy; Short Story
Publisher/Publication Date: Bloomsbury Publishing; October 20, 2024

Goodreads 

Synopsis from Goodreads...

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the Strange universe.

"A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really."

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees - and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods. One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst - and the path of her life is changed forever.

As my Short Story intro above says, I’m taking a break from the typical format to look at Susanna Clarke’s short story, The Wood at Midwinter, illustrated by Victoria Sawdon. I was very excited to pick this one up, considering how much I adored Piranesi—and I’m slowly working my way through Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norwell, which has, so far, been as entertaining as I’d hoped. But, I digress, this post is about The Wood at Midwinter.

A woman, Merowdis, sits in a forest at midwinter, which was, now that I think about it, very fairy tale-esque of her. She talks to animals, to the bugs, and even to the trees; her loyal animals and, as the title suggests, the wood at midwinter. It’s a conversation between all of them, wherein she laments about her life, what she doesn’t wish to do, and admits to what she desperately wants to have and hold—regardless of the consequences and what she might have to give up to have it. And in a story with a setting like this one, with a quietly magical atmosphere, anything was possible.

The Wood at Midwinter is short but still a delightful little story with an enigmatic character and a wintery backdrop, which featured a nice visual aspect accompanying the prose with Sawdon’s illustrations.

The Friday 56 (251) & Book Beginnings: The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice where every Friday you pick a book and turn to page 56 or 56%, and select a sentence or a few, as long as it's not a spoiler. **Note: Freda @ Freda's Voice is taking a break from The Friday 56; Anne @Head is Full of Books is hosting for now.**

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you're reading.

Synopsis from Goodreads...

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the Strange universe.

"A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really."

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees - and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods. One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst - and the path of her life is changed forever.

Beginning: "It was winter, just a few days before Christmas. A few flakes of snow fell on the quiet fields."

56: "Some stories sink down into your bones. In my own writing I had become fascinated by characters who are bridges between different worlds, between different states of being, characters who feel compelled to try and reconcile the unreconcilable."

Comments: I really liked this short story from Susanna Clarke. Its a very quick read but a good one, and it's illustrated by Victoria Sawdon. Since this was a so short, my 56 this week comes from the author's afterward, just because of how much I loved the quote. What are you reading this week?

Review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Title: Piranesi 
Series: n/a
Author: Susanna Clarke
Source/Format: Purchased; Paperback
More Details: Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: Bloomsbury; September 15, 2020

Goodreads     Amazon     Barnes & Noble    Target

Synopsis from Goodreads...

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

I’ve always wanted to try reading a book by Susanna Clarke, and I settled on Piranesi. When I first heard about it, I was intrigued by its premise. And when I finally got my hands on a copy—it came out in paperback this year—I was more than excited to finally dive into it.

This book is hands down one of the best I’ve read this year. It could be a quiet tale at times, chronicling the character’s life as he lived in a place called the House. For such a short length though, it was a sprawling and intricate tale that meticulously captured and described the isolation of the situation and the setting, as well as the dependency that came about as the result of it.

For this post I’m going to call the character Piranesi, as he is often referred to in the story. “Piranesi lives in the House,” so says the back of the book. What this place is, it’s not apparent for a good chunk of the story. Yet, the mystery of its existence kept me more than entertained. And the answer to what it was, where it came from, and why it was there was quite a twist. The House was revealed to be a vast and magical place, with a whole ocean inside of it that had its own tide patterns. It was also empty except for Piranesi, birds, statues, and the mysterious Other. The story mainly deals with how the mystery of the House is unraveled, as well as what Piranesi’s role is.

I’ve stated a bunch of times on Our Thoughts Precisely that I enjoy a good house story that explores the place as well as the people who inhabit it or visit it. And the setting of the book takes place in a house that seemingly had no end. Since Piranesi is the narrator, we only get the events of the story and the descriptions of the House from his perspective. The story had its own uniqueness to it with the way Piranesi formed his own kind of language to cope with and explain the world he resided in. This was showed through Piranesi’s linguistic habits such as his a penchant for capitalized words, and his claims that other phrases and names had no correlation to what he knew.

Overall, Piranesi was fantastic.

The Friday 56 (209) & Book Beginnings: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice where every Friday you pick a book and turn to page 56 or 56%, and select a sentence or a few, as long as it's not a spoiler. For the full rules, visit the the page HERE

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you're reading.

Synopsis from Goodreads...

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

Beginning: "When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of the three Tides.

56: "At first, I only saw a scattering of here or there, but by the time I drew close to the Vestibule I was walking over an uneven and treacherous Floor of Jagged Stones."

Comments: I finally read Piranesi, and I loved the story. It's one of the best books I've read so far this year. What are you reading this week?