My rating: 4 of 5 stars
* I thank NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. *
Many readers already know of Susanna Clarke and her huge, extravagant, lush, wonderful, funny and tragic Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. And by now they probably all know Piranesi is different. It is, but it’s the same fantastic (in a literal and exuberant sense) mind at work.
We are reading the journal of a Person, a 30-something-year-old man, who lives alone in a cavernous House of Halls and Vestibules, Staircases and Passages, infinite in their Beauty and Kindness. This mighty structure is swept by oceanic Tides, of which the narrator – called Piranesi – keeps careful track. The Halls are peopled by Statues without number, which Piranesi is cataloging, one by one. He loves them, speaks to them, and they help him. He is creating maps, and has memorized the dimensions and locations of every room he has visited – but he will never visit them all in his lifetime. He offers an entry describing “All the people who have ever existed in the world,” and you cock an eyebrow and think, “Wait, seriously?” But… there are only fifteen. Himself, The Other, and thirteen corpses from days gone by, which he respectfully tends and shelters. Piranesi is alone, except for encounters with fish and birds, and The Other, who visits him to discuss “scientific research” on Tuesdays and Fridays for 55 minutes. This composes the entire World.
Or does it?
Clarke messes with you. If you are a Googler, you will discover that Huntley Palmers Family Circle is a popular brand of cookies in the 20th century UK, and the so-labeled red metal box is where the bones of Biscuit-Box Man reside. Occasionally Piranesi finds crisp packets scattered in a passageway, which irritates him. There is a place where he catches a whiff of petrol sometimes – how does he even know what that is? Where did he get the “heavy-gauge plastic” he uses? (The Other gave it to him, among other necessities.) So where are we? And when? Why is Piranesi alone? He doesn’t mind, really. He is gentle, thoughtful, extremely literal (there’s a trick to pull off as a writer, when your character lives in a completely visionary world), naïve but resourceful – there’s more than a bit of the savant about him, or “on the spectrum,” as we say now, with definitely odd social skills (when The Other utters an explicitly violent threat, Piranesi’s thought is: “This was rather unexpected.”)
You have to pay attention. Pay attention to the crumbs Clarke drops deftly by the way. Suggestions, hints: doesn’t this make you think, what if this is what’s going on? Doesn’t that remind you of this other thing? Ohhh, maybe he means that! Maybe? And who is this new Person who has Piranesi so confused, and why does he always harp on exactly what The Other is wearing on Tuesdays and Fridays? There is a list of books referred to in the journals, including titles by R.D. Laing, and notes about a mid-70s occult philosopher. I don’t think I’m spoiling to mention that the real-life Piranesi, an 18th century artist, was famous for a series of haunting etchings of towering, bizarre vaulted rooms known as Le Carceri d’Invenzione.
You have to be patient. Walk along with Piranesi, marvel at his wonderful Statues (including minotaurs) and the meanings he ascribes to them. A gorgeous encounter with an albatross fuels an exquisite imagining of his soul fusing with the splendor of the bird to create an Angel.
If you are attentive, if you are patient, you will understand things that Piranesi, Beloved Child of the House, cannot, but eventually must. There are separations – violent or voluntary – and other fusions and reunions, otherness and connection, sanity and insanity, psychosis and invention, and myth abounding. There is even a roomful of ravens with clattering wings.
Piranesi is a different animal, to be sure. But Clarke’s wondrous imagination, elegant writing, and tenderness for “Otherness” glows within.
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