Book Review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Spoilers)

Rating: 4.3 / 5

I thought this was a wonderfully refreshing novel with a unique premise centered around Piranesi, a character whose life seems ahistorical and immortal, whose innocence and naivety pervades his every move and decision. We enter Piranesi’s mind, child-like, in a world of statues and tides. We view the “Other” with tenderness and admiration. It was a joyful experience reading Piranesi’s perspective as someone who was—in all intents and purposes of the word—happy in his world. But underneath lurked the shadow of something more, construed as the darkness that lay in a hidden knowledge—an inevitable corruption of one’s innocence. When the truth surfaces, I was heartbroken for Piranesi, who must now reconcile his fractured identities.

Beyond the metaphorical, the book is a story about other worlds, parallel universes, quack theorists, and the torture of Matthew Sorensen which eventually leads to the enlightenment (or perhaps quite the opposite) that is Piranesi. The novel builds suspense through the unraveling of Piranesi’s history and the realization that perhaps he is not the “Beloved Child of the House”. He comes from a world not dissimilar to one that we live in, and he makes the decision to leave his world of statues because he cannot bear to be alone.

“Perhaps that is what it is like being with other people. Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not.”

What draws Piranesi, someone who has become so disconnected from other people and who sees skeletons as the only other beings in his world, to desire human company? And what is the price we pay for human connection? Piranesi yearns for his world of statues when he returns to his original world. I see it as a yearning for simplicity and perhaps a desire for a world of equality that cannot be attained in his current world. And yet he sees glimmer of “the House” in his current world, he finds some beauty in a world of people that had wronged him. In an idealistic interpretation of the last line of the novel “The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite”, I think he finds forgiveness and perhaps a sense of peace.