Piranesi

Author: Susanna Clarke

Rating: 2/5

Piranesi has been in the House for as long as he can remember (which may not actually be that long because the House does strange things to your memory). There’s only one other person in the House named the “Other” who’s after ancient knowledge. Piranesi is expected to help the Other in the pursuit of this knowledge.

Spoilers ahead.

Detailed Summary

Piranesi lives in the House which is like a labyrinth with vestibules and statues. There’s an ocean that occasionally floods the place and there are clouds overhead. Piranesi keeps meticulous notes about everything and the story is written in a series of journal entries. Piranesi believes he’s always lived here and there are only fifteen other people in the House, all of whom are skeletons. Piranesi meets the Other, another man who visits him twice a week, who is looking for a “Great and Secret Knowledge” that can be found in the House. Piranesi tells the Other that they should stop this search. The Other tells him they’ve had this conversation before and the House causes memory loss. He also warns Piranesi about a person they call “16” who will try to cause harm to Piranesi. Piranesi meets an old man (he calls him the “Prophet”) who names the Other “Ketterley,” someone who stole his work. The Prophet tells him he’ll show 16 how to get into the House to hurt Ketterley. Piranesi looks back at his journals and realises he can’t remember a lot of what he had written. He learns about a man named Laurence Arne-Sayles who believed other worlds existed and could be accessed. Ketterley was one of his students. Arne-Sayles had a lot of students who were like a cult. He was arrested for kidnapping a man named James Ritter who described himself as having lived in the House. Piranesi learns 16 has entered the House and leaves a message for them. He doesn’t read the reply but after talking to the Other, he learns 16 is a woman named Raphael. Piranesi warns 16 of a flood via a message. He sees another message from her asking if he’s Matthew Rose Sorensen. That activates a few memories in Piranesi. He does more digging in his journals and sees all entries related to Ketterley have been torn out. He finds the scraps and pieces together how he came into the House. He had been a journalist writing a book about Arne-Sayles and had interviewed Ketterley. Ketterley had imprisoned him in the House where he lost his memory and crafted a new identity. Piranesi confronts Ketterley about this on the day of the flood. Raphael tries to find him and explains she’s a British police officer looking for the Arne-Sayles cult. She reveals Piranesi’s family have been looking for him for years since he disappeared but she doesn’t want to force him out. Piranesi agrees to leave. In the epilogue, the narrator goes back and forth between the House and his homeworld. Ketterley died in the flood. The narrator brings James Ritter back occasionally to visit. The narrator isn’t quite Piranesi or Sorensen but someone new.

Plot and Pacing

I was SO close to DNFing this one but I was on the waiting list for FOUR WHOLE MONTHS and, naturally, I felt some pressure to finish the damn thing. Piranesi wasn’t bad. Honestly, I’m still debating whether I should have rated it a 3/5 rather than 2/5. It’s a very cumbersome book which is strange given how short it is. I had great expectations for this because everyone keeps on raving about how amazing it is but I don’t really see the appeal. I was sick of the statues (though the one of the faun gave me some serious Narnia vibes) and the journal entries were so damn boring. I had issues with some of the stylistic choices (more on that later) and I didn’t think the “twist” at the end was really much of a twist. I had sussed out Piranesi being a prisoner and the Other being the villain long before the reveal. Around the middle bit, I did become more invested because I was curious as to how Piranesi had been trapped in the first place and what exactly the House was. But the ending was SO flat! Nothing is really resolved other than, you know, Ketterley dying and Piranesi going back to his homeworld. There’s no explanation as to how the House works or what kind of rituals you had to do to get inside in the first place. It was just so underwhelming.

Characters

I love character-driven stories and you would expect that given this story is written through journal entries, there would be SOME character development or at least that I would root for the protagonist but nooo, I just couldn’t get behind Piranesi! I mean, I thought he was quite endearing with how he wanted to put everyone’s well-being above killing them but I couldn’t empathise much with him. Sure, I felt bad that he had been trapped for so long but this almost felt like it was swept under the rug. None of the other characters stood out to me either so there’s that.

Writing Style

Okay, don’t come at me with knives but I could NOT get behind the writing style. Maybe Clarke’s writing just isn’t for me? Which is disappointing because Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has been on my TBR for years. I didn’t like how Random Words Were Capitalised. I know authors do that to show something is interesting or novel but when every third word is capitalised (and not because of short sentences), it gets annoying very quickly. There’s also one part where Piranesi seems to break the fourth wall:

And You. Who are You? Who is it that I am writing for?

I like it when authors break the fourth wall because I feel a lot more invested in the story but after having finished the book, this wasn’t really breaking the fourth wall, was it? Because 16 turned out to be a character in the book (aka Raphael) when this gave me the impression that I was 16. I guess I felt a tiny bit cheated when this wasn’t the case. I also wasn’t a fan of all the random lists Piranesi included in his journals. Clarke got away with a lot of info-dumping because of that narrative choice. I can’t say I was particularly hooked.

So, yeah, overall, not a fan and am quite disappointed with this book. I do seem to be in the minority though which is annoying–I really wanted to like this book.