Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
I bought this on a whim in an airport bookshop, expecting a small dark fantasy to kill a flight. I finished it on the flight, opened it again during the layover, and then read the last third that same night in bed. I do not usually do this. I do not usually read the same book twice in a row. I read this book twice in a row.
Piranesi is short. Barely 250 pages. Its setup is almost embarrassingly simple. A man lives alone in an infinite house of vestibules and marble halls, filled with statues and haunted by tides. He keeps meticulous journals. He is happy. He is also, quite obviously to the reader, not correct about what is going on.
What Clarke pulls off is that the reveal, when it comes, does not ruin the House. If anything the House becomes more sacred, not less, once you understand what it actually is. That is a trick I have seen attempted many times and pulled off maybe twice. This is one of the twice.
what worked
- The prose is doing a lot of quiet work. Piranesi capitalises his Nouns the way a medieval monk might. It should be twee. It isn't.
- The journals-as-narration format lets Clarke hide information in plain sight. Half the fun on a re-read is watching earlier entries mean the opposite of what you first thought.
- It ends. It ends properly. In an era of series and sequel-hooks, a book that trusts itself to be one book is a real gift.
what didn't
- The antagonist is thin on purpose, which is fine, but occasionally I wanted just one more scene with them from a different angle.
- The midsection has a slow passage of maybe thirty pages where Piranesi catalogues halls he has already catalogued. I understand what it's doing structurally. It is still thirty pages of catalogue.
who I'd hand it to
Anyone who liked the mood of House of Leaves but wished it were kinder. Anyone who has ever wanted to live inside a slightly ruined building on the coast. People who journal.
I don't think it will be for everyone. If you want plot in the traditional fantasy-novel sense of quests, factions, rising action, you'll finish this wondering what happened. But if you're willing to just be somewhere with a narrator for a couple of hundred pages, this is one of the best places to be.