This contrast between the magical and the banal connects Piranesi to Clarke’s first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Inevitably, this tension opens into a delightful mystery that propels the book forward. These gifts, and the Other, feel out of place amid vaulting halls kissed by clouds and washed by crossing tides, and they offer the first hints that Piranesi’s understanding of his world may be woefully lacking. These gifts include such things as plastic bowls, socks, a sleeping bag, a watch battery, boxes of matches, and bottles of multivitamins. But he also has journals, in which he writes about his exploration of the House and of the many gifts given to him by the Other, the only other resident of the House. Piranesi touches on the many uses he has for the fish leather and seaweed that the House provides in its oceans. For starters, he estimates his age somewhere around 35 years old and says he has lived in the House as long as he can recall, except his memory doesn’t go back further than several years. His voice is delightfully innocent and direct, yet Clarke gives us plenty of reason to doubt him, even from the outset. As a narrator, he is a fascinating mystery. This idea, however, never occurs to Piranesi. Christians might recognize here something of the idea of God’s presence in the world. There’s a certain magic in the conceit of a house with clouds and oceans, but there’s an even greater magic in how Piranesi relates to the House. The bottom floor opens to oceans where the protagonist, Piranesi, collects the fish and seaweed that sustain him. Clouds float through it and rain falls into it in the places where the roof has collapsed.
#PIRANESI BOOK FANART FULL#
These chambers are full of ancient statues, all distinct from each other.Īlthough the House has but three floors, the top floor opens to the moon and stars. It is a massive, monolithic, and mysterious world of giant, echoing chambers that stretch for miles in every direction. According to the novel’s main character, and one of the House’s only residents, the House is everything. What is the world Clarke creates? It is a house. It’s this early world building, more than anything else, that pulls us out of our daily lives and allows Clarke to lure us into her spell. Those who persist, allowing the voice and ideas to wash over them, will find an innocence and joy that set Piranesi apart from most contemporary literature.
The world building is intentional, though. The book opens with a great deal of world building that will feel familiar to any fan of fantasy or science fiction-but that others might find off-putting. This transformation is quite literal, and Clarke begins by rooting us in an alien language, mind-set, and setting. In these beautifully written pages, Susanna Clarke transforms the way we see our world and ourselves. It doesn’t just allow us to explore a magical world it weaves magic into its readers’ lives. Piranesi is not one of these hollow tales.
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