Book Review: Piranesi
Feb. 19th, 2021 01:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerFriends! Romans! Countrymen! After a LONG wait in the library hold queue, I have at last gotten my mitts on Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, and I devoured it in an evening. Highly recommended if you like strange and dreamy worlds and/or a distinctive, curious, occasionally somewhat mystical narrative voice.
Like A Gentleman in Moscow, Piranesi struck me as a perfect pandemic read: again you have the narrator who is stuck in a single building (although the House in Piranesi appears to go on without end), in a situation that might make for extreme monotony: the House, though endless, simply goes on hall after hall, each hall filled with statues, endless, endless statues. Our narrator knows only one other person, whom he calls simply the Other; and the Other calls our narrator Piranesi, although Piranesi is fairly certain this is not his name.
But like the Count in A Gentleman in Moscow, Piranesi manages to find meaning and variety in his circumscribed surroundings. Piranesi is endlessly curious, eagerly exploring his world, and not at all put off by the seeming monotony. True, it's just hall after hall of statue after statue, but all the statues are different, and Piranesi has favorites, who become over time almost friends. In fact, the whole house seems a beneficent presence to him, even the parts that another person might find frightening, like the Drowned Halls where there is a steep drop from the level of the floor down into the sunken waters.
The book is an exploration more than anything else, not just of the House but of the circumstances that brought Piranesi to the House. The astute reader will realize pretty quickly that Piranesi has been trapped in a pocket dimension that is connected in some way to our world, but watching the whys and wherefores unfold is still a pleasure - in fact, probably more of a pleasure because the book isn't really concerned with building suspense about the mystery.
Books with a central mystery like this have a sort of adversarial relationship to their readers (the reader wants to guess; the book wants to withhold that information till the critical moment). This is blessedly absent in Piranesi, which figures you will guess and indeed helpfully frontloads the information (like Piranesi's plastic fishing nets) which will help. It's confident that you will keep reading - that, central mystery solved, you will want to keep reading to learn the whys and wherefores, and to enjoy the journey through its strange and lovely world.
Obviously, my next step is to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which in any case has been on my to-read list forever. Has anyone read Clarke's story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu? I don't read short stories often (although I've really been meaning to take a crack at Shirley Jackson's...) but it seems to me that this one might be worth it.
Like A Gentleman in Moscow, Piranesi struck me as a perfect pandemic read: again you have the narrator who is stuck in a single building (although the House in Piranesi appears to go on without end), in a situation that might make for extreme monotony: the House, though endless, simply goes on hall after hall, each hall filled with statues, endless, endless statues. Our narrator knows only one other person, whom he calls simply the Other; and the Other calls our narrator Piranesi, although Piranesi is fairly certain this is not his name.
But like the Count in A Gentleman in Moscow, Piranesi manages to find meaning and variety in his circumscribed surroundings. Piranesi is endlessly curious, eagerly exploring his world, and not at all put off by the seeming monotony. True, it's just hall after hall of statue after statue, but all the statues are different, and Piranesi has favorites, who become over time almost friends. In fact, the whole house seems a beneficent presence to him, even the parts that another person might find frightening, like the Drowned Halls where there is a steep drop from the level of the floor down into the sunken waters.
The book is an exploration more than anything else, not just of the House but of the circumstances that brought Piranesi to the House. The astute reader will realize pretty quickly that Piranesi has been trapped in a pocket dimension that is connected in some way to our world, but watching the whys and wherefores unfold is still a pleasure - in fact, probably more of a pleasure because the book isn't really concerned with building suspense about the mystery.
Books with a central mystery like this have a sort of adversarial relationship to their readers (the reader wants to guess; the book wants to withhold that information till the critical moment). This is blessedly absent in Piranesi, which figures you will guess and indeed helpfully frontloads the information (like Piranesi's plastic fishing nets) which will help. It's confident that you will keep reading - that, central mystery solved, you will want to keep reading to learn the whys and wherefores, and to enjoy the journey through its strange and lovely world.
Obviously, my next step is to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which in any case has been on my to-read list forever. Has anyone read Clarke's story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu? I don't read short stories often (although I've really been meaning to take a crack at Shirley Jackson's...) but it seems to me that this one might be worth it.
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Date: 2021-02-19 08:46 pm (UTC)Technically no, but I've read all the short stories collected in it, and while I do not love them all as I love Piranesi or, actually, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, "Mr Simonelli, or the Fairy Widower" is worth the price of admission and I remember really liking "Tom Brightwind, or How the Fairy Bridge was Built at Thoresby," "Mrs. Mabb," and the title story as well.
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Date: 2021-02-19 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-19 09:58 pm (UTC)I'm really looking forward to reading Piranesi.
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Date: 2021-02-19 10:04 pm (UTC)I remember bouncing hard off "The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse," which is fanfiction for Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Her fanfiction for Gaiman's The Sandman, on the other hand, is stone cold brilliant and to my knowledge has never appeared anywhere but its original publication in the anthology The Sandman: Book of Dreams (1996): "Stopp't-Clock Yard." I suspect there's some kind of rights hell about reprinting it, but I wish it were easier to point to. It is almost in continuity with Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
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Date: 2021-02-19 10:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-19 10:57 pm (UTC)I wrote a brief review of The Ladies of Grace Adieu here; the comments may be more helpful than my actual post. The consensus seems to be that "Mr. Simonelli, or the Fairy Widower" is everyone's favorite!
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Date: 2021-02-20 05:01 am (UTC)I do love Jonathan Strange, and like everyone else, I will lay my Ladies of Grace Adieu link at your comment door. (It is a very short review which says I liked it.)
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Date: 2021-02-20 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 07:00 pm (UTC)I'll be really interested to hear what you think of Piranesi once you read it!
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Date: 2021-02-21 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-21 11:04 pm (UTC)