A Short Book Review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

 5 October 2020

One of the things about reading e-books from library services is the AI behind the service tracks your interest.  If you are into revenge port such tracking is not your friend is a bad thing and your name might find its way into a file on a police tracking system.  If you are into escapist fiction, while you are probably okay with the police, those in your circle who favor serious literature might look down upon your reading of one more variant of A Year in Provence, albeit set instead in Tuscany or Morocco.   

 

My tastes in books are akin to my tastes in music.  I like authors in translation from the French, the Japanese, and from a wide array of other languages.  I like critical darlings favored by the Booker Prize.  But then again, I like total trash like Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden stories. My tastes have followed the trajectory of my life, partly truth and partly fiction.

 

Well the library’s bot, as I was returning an early Dresden book that I had not read before, suggested Piranesi. I didn’t know the book but I did know the author. Susanna Clarke wrote the book and she had previously created one of the greatest fantasy books I think I have ever read, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Given my love of the Jonathon Strange book I decided to give the tome a chance. I downloaded it from the library. 

 

Wow.  Simply Wow.

 

To try and give you a sample of the text of the novel, or a summary of the characters, would ruin the reading experience of anyone actually coming to the book.  Suffice it to say the novel is in the genre of fantasy and for the most part if focused on three characters.  The characters are two men, and the environment they inhabit.  The tale is one of divided desires for awareness and for comfort. Ritual and pattern are preeminent in this tale. 

 

When you begin reading the story you are dropped into a world like none you have known but which you may have imagined when you first heard of lost civilizations, places vanished beneath the dusts of antiquity or the waves of an unforgiving sea. For a substantial part of the book you are an observer in a darkened room where things don’t make sense.  Eventually however someone commences tearing off the papers pasted and taped over the windows.  As light pours in the room you begin to see the reality of the situation bit by bit.  Ah and aha follow.

 

Piranesi is fantasy, but it is a world and perhaps a mindset that you come to understand well by the closing paragraphs of the tale.  Clarke writes in a lyrical style; hers is a stark but gentle style.  Her descriptions leave you with a sense of the feel of Piranesi’s world.  You can see the light of the moon Piranesi watches.  You can smell the waters that surround Piranesi.  When Piranesi’s thoughts get muddled you can empathize.  

 

Once I began this book, I devoured it.  Piranesi is one of those books where the ending, the final paragraphs matter and make the book that much more wonderful.  If you are a fan of Susanna Clarke, or of gentle fantasy, I would urge you to put this on your reading list.  There are wonders awaiting the reader as the dark paper is pulled away and the room where you are standing grows warmly illuminated.