Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Review)

Title: Piranesi
Author: Susanna Clarke
Type: Fiction
Genre: Adult, Fantasy, Mystery
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Date published: September 15, 2020

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

For readers of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.

⤖ My Review ⬻

My experience with Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi was an interesting one. Going into it, I knew that I loved what I had read of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell so far (I love it so much that I actually stopped reading it because at the time Clarke only had one other book out which was an anthology of short stories and I didn’t want to run out of things to read by her. Ridiculous. I know). I just absolutely love love love her writing–how she uses language, as well as the characters and worlds she creates. When reading Piranesi, this opinion was only further solidified in me. The world she has come up with is incredible and I cannot stop thinking about it. I almost feel as if I wanted to spend more time exploring the world with Piranesi, the protagonist, than actually wanting the overarching plot to play out.

In retrospect, the plot itself is quite interesting and unique. Back when I was reading Piranesi though, it didn’t quite click with me for some reason. Maybe, like I said, I just wanted to spend more time in the world rather than having the story develop and then wrap up? Or maybe I wasn’t in the state of mind, or mood (we all know about reading moods) for that kind of plot. One never knows with those things. What I do know is that I had to spend quite a bit of time to mull over what my thoughts and feelings were around Piranesi–and Susanna Clarke by default–and the conclusion that I came to was that even though the plot might not have 100% stolen my heart, I can still appreciate the artistry and talent that went into it, and Clarke remains one of my favourite writers of all time!

⤖ About the Author ⬻

Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham in 1959. A nomadic childhood was spent in towns in Northern England and Scotland. She was educated at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and has worked in various areas of non-fiction publishing, including Gordon Fraser and Quarto. In 1990, she left London and went to Turin to teach English to stressed-out executives of the Fiat motor company. The following year she taught English in Bilbao. She returned to England in 1992 and spent the rest of that year in County Durham, in a house that looked out over the North Sea. There she began working on her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. From 1993 to 2003, Susanna Clarke was an editor at Simon and Schuster’s Cambridge office, where she worked on their cookery list. She has published seven short stories and novellas in US anthologies. One, “The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse,” first appeared in a limited-edition, illustrated chapbook from Green Man Press. Another, “Mr Simonelli or The Fairy Widower,” was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award in 2001. She lives in Cambridge with her partner, the novelist and reviewer Colin Greenland.