Piranesi

I had hoped I would enjoy the book and it did have a compelling plot line. However it just didn't have any effect on me and didn't quite work for me. 2.5 stars.

“Nor do I have any desire to live forever. The House ordains a certain span for birds and another for men. With this I am content.”

3.5 stars but rounded up. Fun world building book that details a “house” inhabited by 2 people and which grows wild with details as it progresses making the narrator question their own sanity.

There is no describing this book and all the magic within it, or the wonderful and endearing character that is Piranesi. My heart feels lighter and my spirit refreshed after having read this. Another book that reminds me how grateful I am to have access to other peoples’ imaginations.

4.5*

RTC

SYNOPSIS

I don’t want to spoil anything about the book. Usually, I write a very short synopsis in my own words for all of my reviews. For this one, I am going to depart from my usual & urge you to not read the plot description. Go into this book as blind as possible. Trust me, fellow reader 💕

MY THOUGHTS

The beginning is confusing, but I beg you to stick with it. Try to go into this book as blind as possible. As you go through the book, the mystery and the confusion slowly recedes, and it all comes together.

Only 250 pages.

Mix of genres: magical realism, fantasy, mystery.

Themes: religion, loneliness, identity, belonging, home.

The writing is beautiful, unique, imaginative, dreamy, and flower. I can’t wait to read more of Susanna Clarke’s work. This book is a masterclass in plotting, pacing, storytelling, & point of view — simply exquisite.

Narrated in 1st person by Piranesi, the main character. He is soooo well written, likable, & developed. He has a certain childlike innocence about him, and he’s so endearing.

The story itself is so unique & thought-provoking. As it develops, it is like seeing puzzle pieces move together, which I loved!

TL;DR: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️masterpiece. unique & beautiful story. a masterclass in plotting, pacing, storytelling, & point of view — simply exquisite.

Very thoughtful and surprising. I liked the writing style.

Por un lado, el principio de este libro es muy interesante.

Algo no tiene mucho sentido en lo que esta ocurriendo, claramente hay algo detras y los protagonistas no tienen ni idea de que es.

Esa sensacion de misterio desaparece mas o menos a mitad del libro donde se van a dar detalles suficiente como para suponer o saber lo que esta pasando.

Lo que ocurre desde entonces esta bien pero ya no tiene esa sensacion magica del principio del libro, se podia haber acortado y no hubiera pasado nada, si despues de la mitad del libro el asunto acaba en 10 paginas en vez de 100, hubiera sido mejor, o si hubieramos tenido la incertidumble por mas tiempo.

This book is doubtlessly one of the most unique I have ever read. I read a lot of fantasy, and over the years, it has become exceedingly difficult to find stories that draw me in as immediately as this one did. Piranesi was the perfect read for October; slightly eerie, beautifully mysterious, and wildly enjoyable.

I've heard people say that it is best to go into this book blind, and I wholeheartedly believe in that myself. I had only the vaguest idea of what this book was about when I started it. The beginning can be jarring and unusual with no preparation, but it is worth the confusion for the overall experience. I almost wish we had uncovered even fewer answers in the end than we did, which is very unlike me. I'm usually of the opinion that there should be a motive and reason for everything, but this book completely stripped me of that notion.

The length was perfect, although I can say with confidence that it is the shortest book I've read in years. Some of my favorite stories are 600+ pages, and it was refreshing to see such a beautiful concept expressed so perfectly in such a brief form. I feel that I might've held a bit of prejudice against short books until this moment. After reading Piranesi, however, I can definitively say that I'll not discriminate against them going forward.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with the ability to read and the desire to either rekindle or ignite their love of fantasy.

I don't like any novel with a man/boy as the protagonist written by a woman

I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery. The sight of the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in the Moonlight made me see how ridiculous that is. The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.

2022 reread: This magical little novel is as delightful on a reread as it was the first time through. Surprisingly, I’d actually forgotten a fair bit of the plot, though I remembered the major twists and turns. With the benefit of foresight, I can more fully appreciate Clarke’s absolute

mastery of tone: she writes in Piranesi’s voice with exquisite control and nuance, which is particularly noticeable when contrasted with the Other’s dialogue and the other writing Piranesi comes across. She does so much with

style alone to communicate character, plot, and theme. It’s incredible.

Prose aside,

Piranesi has perhaps my favorite setting in all of literature. I’d happily spend all day reading Clarke’s description of statues and tides. It’s liminal and surreal and strangely beautiful, and it fits perfectly with the feeling of solitude and quiet melancholy that pervades the novel.

Rereading this, it was fun to pick up on the subtle foreshadowing and notice the clever techniques that Clarke uses—for example, the fact that

the Other never uses pronouns to refer to 16 in order to preserve the twist that 16 is a woman

seems so obvious in hindsight, but still reads so naturally. I also completely missed that the novel

is a romance in which Piranesi and 16 end up together

. Or, at a higher level, I enjoyed watching how Clarke wove themes about memory and identity into the text.

Altogether, a lovely rereading experience, and one that cements

Piranesi as one of my all-time favorite novels.

2021 review: This was a delightful, enchanting little puzzle of a book that's about as perfect as a novel can be. Piranesi's voice is completely unique and equally captivating, as is the House where he lives. The pacing is masterful, allowing the reader to feel fully immersed in the atmosphere of the House as mysteries are slowly revealed and the truth steadily resolves. And the prose is absolutely gorgeous.

Another – perhaps the Statue that I love above all others – stands at a Door between the Fifth and Fourth North-Western Halls. It is the Statue of a Faun, a creature half-man and half-goat, with a head of exuberant curls. He smiles slightly and presses his forefinger to his lips. I have always felt that he meant to tell me something or perhaps to warn me of something:

Quiet! he seems to say.

Be careful! But what danger there could possibly be I have never known. I dreamt of him once; he was standing in a snowy forest and speaking to a female child.

This allusion to C.S. Lewis's

Chronicles of Narnia seems entirely appropriate as

Piranesi embodies a similar whimsical, childlike innocence that is refreshingly optimistic in its outlook. And, of course, there are other similarities:

All around me doors into other worlds began appearing but I knew the one I wanted, the one into which everything forgotten flows. The edges of that door were frayed and worn by the passage of old ideas leaving this world.

Altogether, this is one of the best novels I've read in quite a while. I'm ashamed to admit that I put off reading this, despite the hype and intriguing blurb, because of the cover. I still don't like it: it's ugly, but more importantly it gives the impression that

Piranesi is a dark, heavy, complicated novel. That impression could not be further from the truth, in the best ways possible.

If I could give this more than five stars, I would.The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

Some favorite passages:

‘People call me a philosopher or a scientist or an anthropologist. I am none of those things. I am an anamnesiologist. I study what has been forgotten. I divine what has disappeared utterly. I work with absences, with silences, with curious gaps between things. I am really more of a magician than anything else.’ Laurence Arne-Sayles, interview in The Secret Garden, May 1976

The Windows of the House look out upon Great Courtyards; barren, empty places paved with stone. The Courtyards are generally four-sided, although now and then you will come upon one with six sides, or eight, or even – these are rather strange and gloomy – only three. Outside the House there are only the Celestial Objects: Sun, Moon and Stars. The House has three Levels. The Lower Halls are the Domain of the Tides; their Windows – when seen from across a Courtyard – are grey-green with the restless Waters and white with the spatter of Foam. The Lower Halls provide nourishment in the form of fish, crustaceans and sea vegetation. The Upper Halls are, as I have said, the Domain of the Clouds; their Windows are grey-white and misty. Sometimes you will see a whole line of Windows suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning. The Upper Halls give Fresh Water, which is shed in the Vestibules in the form of Rain and flows in Streams down Walls and Staircases. Between these two (largely uninhabitable) Levels are the Middle Halls, which are the Domain of birds and of men. The Beautiful Orderliness of the House is what gives us Life.

The Other and I are searching diligently for this Knowledge. We meet twice a week (on Tuesdays and Fridays) to discuss our work. The Other organises his time meticulously and never permits our meetings to last longer than one hour. If he requires my presence at other times, he calls out ‘Piranesi!’ until I come. Piranesi. It is what he calls me. Which is strange because as far as I remember it is not my name.

Another – perhaps the Statue that I love above all others – stands at a Door between the Fifth and Fourth North-Western Halls. It is the Statue of a Faun, a creature half-man and half-goat, with a head of exuberant curls. He smiles slightly and presses his forefinger to his lips. I have always felt that he meant to tell me something or perhaps to warn me of something: Quiet! he seems to say. Be careful! But what danger there could possibly be I have never known. I dreamt of him once; he was standing in a snowy forest and speaking to a female child.

East of the First Vestibule the House is Derelict. Masonry and Statues from the Upper Halls have fallen through Broken Floors into the Middle and Lower Halls, blocking Doorways. There is an Area covering perhaps as many as forty or fifty Halls where the Tides cannot penetrate. Over time the Sea Water has drained away and these Halls have filled up with Rain, making dark, still, freshwater Lakes. Their Windows are half-submerged in Water or blocked by Masonry, making them dim and shadowy. Cut off from the Tides, they are unusually silent. These are the Drowned Halls. On the Periphery of this Region the Waters are shallow, tranquil and covered with water lilies, but in the centre they are deep and treacherous, full of broken Masonry and drowned Statues. The majority of the Drowned Halls are inaccessible, but some can be entered from the Upper Level.

As far as possible I kept to the Dry Halls where the Statues are not clothed in rags of seaweed or armoured with encrustations of shellfish, where the Air is not scented with the Tides: Halls, in other words, that have not been flooded in recent Times. Water was not a problem; most Halls contain Falls of Fresh Water (sometimes you will see a Statue almost bisected by the Water that has splashed onto it for centuries).

In the Forty-Fifth Vestibule I saw a Staircase that had become one vast bed of mussels. One of the Statues that lined the Wall of the Staircase was all but engulfed in a blue-black carapace of mussels with only half a staring Face and one white, out-flung Arm left free.

My first great insight happened when I realised how much humankind had lost. Once, men and women were able to turn themselves into eagles and fly immense distances. They communed with rivers and mountains and received wisdom from them. They felt the turning of the stars inside their own minds. My contemporaries did not understand this.

They were all enamoured with the idea of progress and believed that whatever was new must be superior to what was old. As if merit was a function of chronology! But it seemed to me that the wisdom of the ancients could not have simply vanished. Nothing simply vanishes. It’s not actually possible. I pictured it as a sort of energy flowing out of the world and I thought that this energy must be going somewhere. That was when I realised that there must be other places, other worlds. And so I set myself to find them.’ ‘And did you find any, sir?’ I asked. ‘I did. I found this one. This is what I call a Distributary World – it was created by ideas flowing out of another world. This world could not have existed unless that other world had existed first. Whether this world is still dependent on the continued existence of the first one, I don’t know. It’s all in the book I wrote.

Before I had seen this world, I thought that the knowledge that created it would somehow still be here, lying about, ready to be picked up and claimed. Of course, as soon as I got here, I realised how ridiculous that was. Imagine water flowing underground. It flows through the same cracks year after year and it wears away at the stone. Millennia later you have a cave system. But what you don’t have is the water that originally created it. That’s long gone. Seeped away into the earth. Same thing here.

‘Is what why there are Statues?’ ‘Do the Statues exist because they embody the Ideas and Knowledge that flowed out of the other World into this one?’ ‘Oh! I never thought of that!’ he said, pleased. ‘What an intelligent observation. Yes, yes! I think that highly likely! Perhaps in some remote area of the labyrinth, statues of obsolete computers are coming into being as we speak!’

I was shocked to think how close I had come to missing this event altogether! My last set of calculations were for a period that ended more than two weeks ago. I had neglected my duties and put Myself and the Other in mortal danger! In my agitation I leapt up and walked rapidly up and down the Hall. Oh, fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I muttered to Myself. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! After a minute or two of walking uselessly to and fro, I spoke to Myself sternly, telling Myself that it was no good bewailing the Past; what was needed now was to plan for the Future.

This Vestibule is notable for a shallow, sloping bank of white marble pebbles, which partially blocks the Mouth of the Staircase leading to the Lower Halls. The pebbles have been deposited here over time by the Tides. They have smooth, rounded shapes, delightful to the touch; they are a pure white colour with a beautiful, glowing translucency.

He wrote about magic and pretended it was science.

He claimed that he personally was able to access the labyrinth-world simply by making an adjustment to his frame of mind, by returning to a child-like state of wonder, a prerational consciousness.

Spray as high as the Ceiling exploded through all the Northern Doors. The Spray caught the Sun; it was as if someone had suddenly thrown a hundred barrelfuls of diamonds into the Hall.

Though the Coral Halls are dry now, it appears that at one time they were flooded with Sea Water for a long period. Coral has grown there, changing the Statues in strange and unexpected ways. One may see, for example, a Woman crowned with coral, her Hands transformed into stars or flowers. There are Figures horned with coral, or crucified on coral branches, or stuck through with coral arrows. There is a Lion enmeshed in a cage of coral and a Man holding a Little Box. The coral has grown so profusely over his Left Side that half of him appears to be engulfed in red-and rose-coloured flames, while the other half is not.

It is my belief that the World (or, if you will, the House, since the two are for all practical purposes identical) wishes an Inhabitant for Itself to be a witness to its Beauty and the recipient of its Mercies.

In my mind are all the tides, their seasons, their ebbs and their flows. In my mind are all the halls, the endless procession of them, the intricate pathways. When this world becomes too much for me, when I grow tired of the noise and the dirt and the people, I close my eyes and I name a particular vestibule to myself; then I name a hall. I imagine I am walking the path from the vestibule to the hall. I note with precision the doors I must pass through, the rights and lefts that I must take, the statues on the walls that I must pass.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.