“Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke

As a huge fan of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as well as The Ladies of Grace Adieu I was so pumped when I saw that Clarke had a new book out. (Posts on the previous books here and here.) It took me a while to get to it because my life sucks (lol) but I finally read it! And it is very good, definitely worth the wait while she was writing it.

The story follows an individual who lives in a huge house with many interconnected rooms. Each room also has a unique set of statues. And there’s tides that sometimes rise into the lower rooms, so there’s a body of water nearby. This person regularly meets with the Other, the only other living human nearby, to talk about the Other’s quest to unlock some great Knowledge that is inside the house. However the Other warns that another person might come and try to make the protagonist mad. Around this same time, the protagonist realizes that they have been forgetting things, there are journal entries from years ago that they don’t remember writing and things like that. When this person comes though, they manage to leave a message to the protagonist that just reads “are you Matthew Rose Sorenson?” That triggers the protagonist to find the torn up journal entry that details how the Other tricked the protagonist and trapped them in this other world that the house is in. It ends with a great flood that kills the Other and the protagonist returning to our world with the other person (who is a police officer investigating Matthew’s disappearance).

It's a relatively simple plot, but there are a lot of details there that I glossed over. One thing is the title of the book, Piranesi is the name that the Other gives to the protagonist, even though that isn’t his name. It’s never totally explained in the book, but if you look up “Piranesi” you find an Italian scholar who would draw pictures of imaginary prisons. It is an appropriate thing to call someone that you’ve trapped in another dimension that consists of a labyrinth then.

What I also really liked about the book is how it handles identity and memory. The protagonist goes through 3 different identities over the course of their lifetime. They start as Matthew Rose Sorenson, a relentless journalist and writer. Once they are trapped in the House though, their memories start to fade and they become Piranesi, the Child of the House. But when Piranesi reflects on being Matthew, they don’t really regret the change or want to revert back to it. Of course they’re mad about it because they didn’t get a say in the change, but they value their life as Piranesi. As a reader, I guess I’m much more similar to Matthew so when reading about that I wanted Piranesi to become Matthew again. But it strikes me as much more realistic that Piranesi also likes their current self and doesn’t want to throw that away instantly. The way Piranesi describes it is that Matthew fell asleep and is inside them. And Piranesi now takes care of them both. The final change is when Piranesi returns to their original world and inhabits a sort of middle ground between the two. Not totally Matthew since they don’t have all of their original memories, but not totally Piranesi as they have to deal with the modern world.

I would like to hear from someone who knows more about mental health and things like that for their take on the book. It strikes me as a very kind book to people who might be seen as different, and whose grip on reality might not be seen as very stable. Piranesi is seen as very innocent and child-like (you have to have that child-like wonder to get to the House after all) but never is infantilized. Others who went to the House also aren’t looked down on either. Even when Piranesi returns to England he says that his family has him seeing a psychotherapist, but they’re ok without medicating him which implies that he had some say in his treatment.

I also have to wonder how much the pandemic played a role in this book. It was published during COVID, and so much of it is about isolation and exploration of an empty space that you’re trapped in. Did Clarke come up with this during quarantine? Or did it just line up serendipitously?

Loved this book, it is so well written it really sucks you into Piranesi’s home. I’ll read anything Clarke writes, but I hope the next one doesn’t have as long of a wait as this one.