Review: Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke

[Russ Allbery]

Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Copyright: 2020
ISBN:      1-63557-564-8
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     245

Piranesi is a story told in first-person journal entries by someone who
lives in a three-floored world of endless halls full of statues. The
writing style is one of the most distinctive things about this book
(and something you'll have to get along with to enjoy it), so it's
worth quoting a longer passage from the introductory description of the
world:

  I am determined to explore as much of the World as I can in my
  lifetime. To this end I have travelled as far as the
  Nine-Hundred-and-Sixtieth Hall to the West, the
  Eight-Hundred-and-Ninetieth Hall to to the North and the
  Seven-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eighth Hall to the South. I have climbed up
  to the Upper Halls where Clouds move in slow procession and Statues
  appear suddenly out of the Mists. I have explored the Drowned Halls
  where the Dark Waters are carpeted with white water lilies. I have
  seen the Derelict Halls of the East where Ceilings, Floors —
  sometimes even Walls! — have collapsed and the dimness is split by
  shafts of grey Light.

  In all these places I have stood in Doorways and looked ahead. I
  have never seen any indication that the World was coming to an End,
  but only the regular progression of Halls and Passageways into the
  Far Distance.

  No Hall, no Vestibule, no Staircase, no Passage is without its
  Statues. In most Halls they cover all the available space, though
  here and there you will find an Empty Plinth, Niche or Apse, or even
  a blank space on a Wall otherwise encrusted with Statues. These
  Absences are as mysterious in their way as the Statues themselves.

So far as the protagonist knows, the world contains only one other
living person, the Other, and thirteen dead ones who exist only as
bones. The Other is a scientist searching for Great and Secret
Knowledge, and calls the protagonist Piranesi, which is odd because
that is not the protagonist's name.

Be warned that I'm skating around spoilers for the rest of this review.
I don't think I'm giving away anything that would ruin the book, but
the nature of the story takes some sharp turns. If knowing anything
about that would spoil the book for you and you want to read this
without that knowledge, you may want to stop reading here.

I also want to disclose early in this review that I wanted this to be a
different book than it is, and that had a significant impact on how
much I enjoyed it. Someone who came to it with different expectations
may have a different and more enjoyable experience.

I was engrossed by the strange world, the atmosphere, and the mystery
of the halls full of statues. The protagonist is also interested in the
same things, and the early part of the book is full of discussion of
exploration, scientific investigation, and attempts to understand the
nature of the world. That led me to hope for the sort of fantasy novel
in which the setting is a character and where understanding the setting
is a significant part of the plot.

Piranesi is not that book. The story that Clarke wants to tell is
centered on psychology rather than setting. The setting does not become
a character, nor do we learn much about it by the end of the book.
While we do learn how the protagonist came to be in this world, my
first thought when that revelation starts halfway through the book was
"this is going to be disappointing." And, indeed, it was.

I say all of this because I think Piranesi looks, from both its
synopsis and from the first few chapters, like it's going to be a world
building and exploration fantasy. I think it runs a high risk of
disappointing readers in the way that it disappointed me, and that can
lead to disliking a book one may have enjoyed if one had read it in a
different mood and with a different set of expectations.

Piranesi is, instead, about how the protagonist constructs the world,
about the effect of trauma on that construction, and about the
complexities hidden behind the idea of recovery. And there is a lot to
like here: The ending is complex and subtle and does not arrive at easy
answers (although I also found it very sad), and although Clarke, by
the end of the book, is using the setting primarily as metaphor, the
descriptions remain vivid and immersive. I still want the book that I
thought I was reading, but I want that book in large part because the
fragments of that book that are in this one are so compelling and
engrossing.

What did not work for me was every character in the book except for the
protagonist and one supporting character.

The relationship between the protagonist and the Other early in the
book is a lovely bit of unsettling complexity. It's obvious that the
Other has a far different outlook on the world than the protagonist,
but the protagonist seems unaware of it. It's also obvious that the
Other is a bit of a jerk, but I was hoping for a twist that showed
additional complexity in his character. Sadly, when we get the twist,
it's not in the direction of more complexity. Instead, it leads to a
highly irritating plot that is unnecessarily prolonged through the
protagonist being gullible and child-like in the face of blatantly
obvious gaslighting. This is a pattern for the rest of the book: Once
villains appear on stage, they're one-note narcissists with essentially
no depth.

There is one character in Piranesi that I liked as well or better than
the protagonist, but they only show up late in the story and get very
little character development. Clarke sketches the outline of a
character I wanted to learn much more about, but never gives us the
details on the page. That leads to what I thought was too much telling
rather than showing in the protagonist's relationships at the end of
the book, which is part of why I thought the ending was so sad. What
the protagonist loses is obvious to me (and lines up with the loss I
felt when the book didn't turn out to be what I was hoping it would
be); what the protagonist gains is less obvious, is working more on the
metaphorical level of the story than the literal level, and is more
narrated than shown.

In other words, this is psychological fantasy with literary
sensibilities told in a frame that looks like exploration fantasy.
Parts of it, particularly the descriptions and the sense of place, are
quite skillful, but the plot, once revealed, is superficial, obvious,
and disappointing. I think it's possible this shift in the reader's
sense of what type of book they're reading is intentional on Clarke's
part, since it works with the metaphorical topic of the book. But it's
not the existence of a shift itself that is my primary objection. I
like psychological fantasy as well as exploration fantasy. It's that I
thought the book after the shift was shallower, less interesting, and
more predictable than the book before the shift.

The one thing that is excellent throughout Piranesi, though, is the
mood. It takes a bit to get used to the protagonist's writing style
(and I continue to dislike the Affectation of capitalizing Nouns when
writing in English), but it's open-hearted, curious, thoughtful,
observant, and capable in a way I found delightful. Some of the events
in this book are quite dark, but it never felt horrifying or oppressive
because the protagonist remains so determinedly optimistic and upbeat,
even when yanked around by the world's most obvious and blatant
gaslighting. That persistent hopefulness and lightness is a good
feature in a book published in 2020 and is what carried me through the
parts of the story I didn't care for.

I wish this had been a different book than it was, or failing that, a
book with more complex and interesting supporting characters and plot
to fit its complex and interesting psychological arc. I also wish that
Clarke had done something more interesting with gender in this novel;
it felt like she was setting that up for much of the book, and then it
never happened. Ah well.

As is, I can't recommend Piranesi, but I can say the protagonist,
atmosphere, and sense of place are very well done and I think it will
work for some other readers better than it did for me.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Reviewed: 2021-08-01

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-63557-564-8.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)             <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>