On Reviews: Piranesi

It’s not often I write reviews for this publication. In fact, I’ve only done it one other time in this format (ignore all the times I kinda sorta reviewed something… like last week when I did but also didn’t review Starship Troopers). Today, however, I have quite the recommendation for all my book lovers out there: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

Piranesi is a riveting tale about our eponymous protagonist and their life in “the House.” It doesn’t sound exactly riveting until I tell you that the House is a labyrinthine series of seemingly infinite rooms extending in every direction. Each room is full of statues depicting everything from massive minotaurs, to ships battling against storms, to imposing gorillas, to a corpulent Pope. Every statue is different and therefore every room is different. There are stairs that lead up to a second floor full of rain clouds, fog, lightning storms, and (you guessed it) statues! There’s also a lower floor, home to fish, crustaceans, and tides of thundering water that pepper the otherwise peaceful House with the echoing slams of water on distant (and sometimes not so distant) walls.

The plot of Piranesi is something I won’t go too far into as there’s a specific joy in learning more about the House and all its intricacies and inhabitants. What I do want to talk about is the sense of place that Susanna Clarke brilliantly crafts. The House is this unbelievably Escheresque puzzle of liminal space that is, at first, incredibly difficult to wrap your head around. The more time you spend in the House, though, the more comfortable you are in it. Early on, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when Piranesi tells you he walked through the 18^th Northwest Vestibule on the way to check on the rooks that live in that direction. As the novel progresses, you’ll realize you take comfort in some of the same statues that Piranesi does, like the aforementioned gorilla, or the beekeeper.

(this is what Google’s Gemini AI generated when I put my description of the House into it and poked it a few times to do better…not bad)

I finished this book more than a week ago and I still find myself thinking about it constantly, although in a way I don’t usually find myself thinking about books: I’m not thinking about the twists and turns of the plot (even though I greatly enjoyed them). Instead, I can’t stop thinking about the feeling of being in the House. This all-encompassing, marble universe with its own ecosystem, set of seasons, and mythology.

Because of the way it bends perception, creating a seemingly (possibly? Definitely?) set of nearly identical but clearly unique rooms, I’m conflicted on whether I would ever want to see a depiction of the House. Could a visual medium even capture the endless nature of the House? A painting seems far too limited. A television show or movie could be interesting but you would always be looking at a screen while sitting in your home or a theater. Virtual Reality is what really gets my mind going when it comes to exploring a space like this. To be fully immersed and able to traverse from room to room, seeing the statues, hearing the echoing tides…now that’s a depiction I could get behind!

Do you have a book you love because it took you to a place you could never have imagined without it? Tell me about it, wouldn’t you?