I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to decide to read Piranesi. Although I loved Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, this one sounded very different and didn’t immediately appeal to me, but I did still intend to read it sooner rather than later. Now that I have, I think Jonathan Strange is still my favourite, but I enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected to.
Our narrator, Piranesi, lives in a place he calls ‘the House’, a vast, labyrinthine structure containing hundreds of interconnected halls and vestibules. The lower levels of the building are flooded and there is a complex system of tides that only Piranesi understands. The House is his entire world; he believes he has always lived there and can’t remember any other way of life. His only human contact comes twice a week when he meets a man he thinks of as ‘the Other’ and assists him in his quest to find the Great and Secret Knowledge. Apart from himself and the Other, Piranesi is only aware of thirteen more people who have ever existed in the world, all now skeletons resting in the niches and alcoves of the House.
Piranesi is quite content with his solitary existence, exploring the enormous halls and passageways, studying the impressive statues he finds there and recording his discoveries in a series of notebooks. Then one day, everything changes. Could there be a sixteenth person in the world – and if so, who are they and what do they want?
I’m not going to say any more about the plot than that, partly because it’s a story that I don’t want to spoil for anyone who hasn’t read it yet but also because I found the plot secondary to the setting and the sense of place. The atmosphere Clarke creates really is wonderful; from the first chapter I felt fully immersed in the majestic, watery world of Piranesi’s House, a world that is somehow simultaneously both vast and claustrophobic. The book was published during the first year of the pandemic in 2020 and I’m sure if I’d read it then the themes of solitude and a life cut off from the outside world would have resonated with me even more than they did now. It’s no coincidence that Piranesi was also the name of an 18th century Venetian architect and artist famous for his etchings of ‘Imaginary Prisons’ showing huge subterranean vaults complete with staircases, arches and towers.
Towards the end of the book, as we finally began to learn more about the House and how Piranesi and the Other came to be there, I felt that the story started to slightly lose its magic. I had loved the eerie, otherworldly feel of the first half of the book and was less interested in the revelations that came at the end. Still, Piranesi is a very impressive novel and one that I would probably have to read again to fully appreciate everything Susanna Clarke was trying to say.
She Reads Novels 
It sounds a bit strange, but I suppose it’s meant to!
It’s very unusual!
I thought I’d only read Jonathan Norell and Mr. Strange, but as I think it over, I realize I read The Ladies of Grace Adieu, but I don’t remember a thing about it. Huh. I’m not sure this one would be my cup of tea. I can understand why you didn’t get around to it for a while.
I don’t think I ever read The Ladies of Grace Adieu, even though I enjoyed Jonathan Strange.
I know I did, but I don’t remember it.
I had one of the best reading experiences of my life with Piranesi (in an 18th-century fisherman’s cottage on the Kent coast during a weekend of Atlantic gales, listening to the house creak and settle around me as I read–the book got into my dreams) and have evangelised it to many people since then. I so hope Clarke writes more.
That sounds like a great experience. So atmospheric!
It was pretty great 🙂
It sounds very appealing. I have read four 2020 published books this year. I’m starting to think that year produced good books.
I didn’t read as much as usual in 2020 as I was too distracted by the pandemic, but yes, there were some great books published that year!
I’ve tried three times to read Piranesi, and never managed to get beyond the first few chapters. I think Clarke is a Marmite-ish sort of author, and I just don’t ‘get’ her, as I’ve never managed to wade through any of her books. I feel I must be missing out, but I really can’t face a fourth attempt.
Well, we can’t all like the same books and I can definitely see why Susanna Clarke’s writing style wouldn’t appeal to everyone! It sounds as though you gave this one a fair chance, anyway.
I really enjoyed ‘Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell’, but for some reason have been avoiding this one. I’m not sure why exactly! I’ll give it another look next time I come across it – maybe in September when I’m next visiting my fave Indie bookshop…
I don’t know why I avoided it for so long either, but I’m glad I eventually decided to give it a try. It’s completely different from Jonathan Strange, but definitely worth reading.
Glad you got to this eventually, it was one of my favourite reads at that period, and that I’m looking forward to revisiting it at some stage says a lot about the impact it had. But then JS&MN is also due a reread …
I read JS&MN around the time it was first published and remember really enjoying it, although I’m not sure whether I’ll ever reread it. I think I would probably have read Piranesi a lot sooner as well if it hadn’t come out during the early stages of the pandemic when I was struggling to concentrate on reading in general.