By Margaret Connor ‘23
Copy Chief
Graphic by Margaret Connor ‘23
At around 250 pages, British author Susanna Clarke’s second novel “Piranesi” seems miniscule in comparison to her 800-page debut novel “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.” But with its imaginative world and compelling narrator, “Piranesi” packs a powerful epistemological punch. The book, however, is not without flaws — its portrayal of minority characters ultimately falls short, leaning on worn-out stereotypes of gay men and people of color.
Clarke’s 2004 novel “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell” was well-received by critics and spent 11 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, even securing an endorsement from cultural monolith and author Neil Gaiman. Both “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell” and “Piranesi” incorporate fantasy elements, with the former set in a fantastic rendition of Britain, filled with magicians and fairy servants, and the latter set in a more exploratory, speculative environment.
“Piranesi,” published in September 2020, presents itself as the journals of a man called Piranesi — though he suspects this isn’t his real name — who inhabits a world composed of endless, sprawling halls and vestibules he calls “the House.” Initially, there is a certain narrative ambiguity as to how literal and how allegorical this setting is. The halls have oceans for floors and the sky at their ceilings, providing shelter for the fish and birds living alongside Piranesi. Marble statues line the halls, each symbolizing different ideas and values, such as learning, caution or empathy.
We learn Piranesi’s goal is to catalogue the statues of the House. Reading his reports of his explorations into the distant halls reveals both the character’s endearingly childlike, wide-eyed curiosity, but also that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Piranesi neither knows nor cares how he came to be in the House or who he truly is. His only human companion in the halls is a man he calls “the Other,” who, in contrast to Piranesi’s harmonious coexistence with the House and its creatures, is dedicated to researching a mysterious, powerful knowledge he believes the House contains.
Told through the eyes of Piranesi, the novel is written in a wondrous, innocent manner enhancing the marvel of the House and its mysteries while creating a sense of gut-bottom dread. There’s something earnest and heartfelt about his interactions with a pair of nesting albatrosses who seem to recognize and communicate with him, or his fascination with the shining objects with which he decorates his hair. Piranesi appears as a naïf –– an “innocent” –– in the purest sense. At the same time, his apparent memory deficits and his initial unquestioning obedience to the Other set up the mystery of how he came to be in the House.
In an era when far too many science-fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction authors load down their prose with tedious, meandering worldbuilding that fails to be of any interest or importance, Clarke’s lush description of the House through Piranesi eyes is compelling and thematically resonant. Her narration particularly shines as the novel’s central exploration becomes clear: What is the search for knowledge, and how does it change those who search?
Graphic by Jieru Ye ‘23
During an interview with The Guardian, Clarke spoke on how her struggles with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome following the publishing of “Jonathan Strange” influenced her writing of “Piranesi.”
“I was aware that I was a person cut off from the world, bound in one place by illness,” Clarke said. “Piranesi considers himself very free, but he’s cut off from the rest of humanity.”
Slowly, Piranesi learns of a world outside of — or perhaps before — the House. One day, while wandering the halls, Piranesi meets a strange man, the disgraced professor Laurence Arne-Sayles, who reveals himself as the man who discovered how to reach the House from our current reality. He explains the House’s knowledge derives from ancient humans’ magical thinking and relationship with the natural world, with the House existing as a “Distributary World” and operating alongside our own reality as a manifestation of a lost, premodern human knowledge. According to him, ancient peoples had a special way of communicating with the world, and, in turn, the world responded. Intrigued by this man and his assertions, Piranesi starts to rebel against the Other, beginning a journey to uncover the truth about the House and himself.
While the innocent, unguarded first-person narration is rarely grating, owing to Piranesi’s rich inner world, his initial portrayal as a blindly-obedient, prelapsarian servant to the Other becomes discomforting when, towards the end of the novel, we learn Piranesi is the only Black character in the cast. In light of this realization, his previously endearing traits — such as his guilelessness and homespun religious beliefs — begin to resemble colonial stereotypes of African people.
In a similar vein, the only character exhibiting any sort of overt sexual orientation is Laurence Arne-Sayles. His initial interaction with Piranesi, and what we later learn about him, portrays him as a predatory, repellant gay man with a penchant for taking advantage of young men, including many of his students. In the final pages of the novel, Piranesi compares him to a statue of a heretical pope: “He is fat and bloated. He lolls on the throne, a shapeless mass. The throne is magnificent, but the sheer bulk of the figure threatens to split it in two. He knows that he is repulsive, but you can see by his face that the idea pleases him.”
In a novel so otherwise gentle and without sharp edges, these outdated — yet still harmful — stereotypes fly in the face of everything “Piranesi” seems to stand for.
With its themes of contemplation and solitude, “Piranesi” is a cathartic pandemic read, and his decision to return to the often-frightening, often-cruel world becomes especially touching as we ourselves reemerge into a non-socially-distanced world.