Piranesi
‘I am the great scholar, the magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on.’ The Magician’s Nephew, C. S. Lewis
This fabulous novel is Susanna Clarke’s second. Her first, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, was recommended to me by many people, but I could not get into it. I did watch and enjoy the BBC adaptation, but even going back to it after that, it did not hold my attention. I don’t doubt its brilliance - too many people whose judgement I respect loved it. Even so, we don’t all love the same things.
Piranesi, however, grabbed me from the outset and simply would not let me go. I often recommend novels to others - and am as often wrong as I am right about whether they will enjoy or not. Piranesi, however, is so good that I actively forced it on one poor victim.
I think she enjoyed it - but maybe I was just so forceful that she didn’t dare say. I happen to know our resident Fox chose a passage of it for her piece on Voice, which you will get to read next week. So that’s a good sign.
I don’t think there’s really a good way of writing about this novel without spoiling at least some of its impact, but I will warn you in in a large bold font just beforehand.
It’s seriously one of the best novels I have read in ages. I read a lot of fiction, much of it crime but also other genres, including fantasy, science fiction, what is loosely known as women’s fiction but is hailed as genius if a man accidentally writes it (David Nicholls springs to mind) and literary too - in other words fiction which transcends one of the other genres, while often touching on their themes and tropes - simply by being well written.
That last should apply to Piranesi for several reasons, which I' will discuss below, but also, surely a genre novel which wins the Women’s Prize for fiction must have transcended something? Still, it’s filed under fantasy for the marketing people, and we all know that’s what matters.
It is one of those rare novels which has stayed with me, and that I am sure is certain to continue doing so. I’ve seen it described as “haunting” but it’s more persistent than the average ghost. I am just going to have to re-read, and I rarely do that these days, now that I am old and barely half full of sleep. Usually these days I only re-read for comfort, when I’m so tired or poorly that novelty fails to enchant.
So, do go read it and then come back and contribute to the discussion, agree or disagree. I could talk about this book all day. Indeed, I occasionally have done. Ask my poor husband.
First, let me tempt you with a reading of the opening
These are the opening paragraphs of the novel - the beginning of Part 1, which is called Piranesi.
"When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule
ENTRY FOR THE FIRST DAY OF THE FIFTH MONTH IN THE YEAR THE ALBATROSS CAME TO THE SOUTH-WESTERN WALLS.
When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of three Tides. This is something that happens only once every eight years.
The Ninth Vestibule is remarkable for the three great Staircases it contains. Its Walls are lined with marble Statues, hundreds upon hundreds of them, Tier upon Tier, rising into the distant heights.
I climbed up the Western Wall until I reached the Statue of a Woman carrying a Beehive, fifteen metres above the Pavement. The Woman is two or three times my own height and the Beehive is covered with marble Bees the size of my thumb. One Bee – this always gives me a slight sensation of queasiness – crawls over her left Eye. I squeezed Myself into the Woman’s Niche and waited until I heard the Tides roaring in the Lower Halls and felt the Walls vibrating with the force of what was about to happen."
What a fabulous opening!
It tells is so much, and conceals so much at the same time.
We can straight away discern that this is some kind of diary entry - although we know from the idiosyncratic dating methodology that we are in a strange world, unknown to us. There are some similarities, of course. There’s a moon. There’s some kind of large building, with halls and vestibules. There are albatrosses - or at least one.
At this point, my mind is already racing ahead, trying to work it out. I am wondering if we are in some kind of alternate universe or a different timeline. My initial guess is that we are in some kind of futuristic post-apocalyptic scenario, where a few survivors are wandering what might be some kind of city. There seems to have been much loss of knowledge - this, I assume, because of the strangeness of the calendar.
Even so, some memories must remain. This writer knows the words for Moon, and Albatross, and has some basic architectural knowledge. And although the calendar is strange in its naming conventions, the structures are familiar.
I read on - what can I deduce about the person who is writing this journal?
The writing style is an odd combination of simple yet scholarly. Odd words, presumed significant to the writer, are capitalised.
The descriptions in these three paragraphs I have shared continue - all combinations of the familiar and the strange. They are clearly the product of a mind that is careful, observant, and determined to keep a record.
We know that this record has been kept for some time - the fifth month of the year implies it has been more than one year - but then in the first paragraph we learn that the three tides join only once every eight years. That must be at least sixteen years, surely?
The third paragraph tells us more. The diarist climbs up fifteen metres from the pavement, to take refuge behind a statue he calls “Woman carrying a beehive”. This statue is three times taller than than him? Or her? At this point I begin to suspect it’s him. Then there’s a reference to “queasiness” at the sight of a bee crawling over the statue’s eye. A bee the size of his thumb. There’s a sense of surprise in that, and I start to wonder - is this character familiar with bees? Surely he must be - especially if he named the statue, and comments on the size, which suggests it’s unusual.
I am reminded of the quotation falsely attributed to Albert Einstein “If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years left to live.” It is, of course, nonsensical hyperbole. But surely this diarist, this close observer of this strange world, has a memory of bees, in order to feel that queasy?
Maybe it’s not post apocalyptic, I think. Perhaps this is a more personal apocalypse. An amnesiac, a man in a coma somehow telling himself - and us - stories?
There are so many questions here, and such an interesting voice - I really couldn’t have stopped reading if I tried.
And the answers are so much more surprising that I could ever have imagined.
Have I tempted you yet?
Beware, spoilers follow
One of the quotations which form the preface to this novel goes thus -
‘I am the great scholar, the magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on.’
The Magician’s Nephew, C. S. Lewis
When I returned to re-read the novel, I thought this could be read as a confession from the writer, almost. Clarke is indeed an magician, an adept - and we are her subjects.
Character is almost everything that matters in novels, and even here, where the House is so very fascinating and central to the story, it’s the characters who stay in my mind.
We discover our diarist is called Piranesi, but we soon find out that is the name give him by the man he calls “The Other”
Piranesi and The Other are the only two characters we meet in this story for the longest time - and we don’t know anything about who they are but what we can deduce. Not even their names.
So there is some amnesia, surely. Intrigued and soon suspicious of The Other, who Piranesi seems to trust with a terrifying naivety, I go to google Piranesi. I want to find out why The Other thinks calling the diarist ‘Piranesi’ is such a joke.
Wikipedia, as ever, to the rescue. Giovanni Battista Piranesi. “An Italian Classical archaeologist, architect, and artist, famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric "prisons" (Le Carceri d'Invenzione).”
Aha! The House, then, is a prison of sorts, perhaps? And our diarist - with his careful notes, is a kind of archaeologist?
Just look at these Prisons of the Imagination! I have lingered over these images since, but at the time I found them, I had to dash back to the novel.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi - Carceri d’ Invenzione, Plate V - Untitled (The Lion Relief)
I am even more suspicious of The Other now. Who is he? Why is he so thoughtless about Piranesi’s basic needs in this House he clearly loves, but which leaves him struggling to get by, while The Other is clearly extremely comfortable.
Already I wonder if he might be Piranesi’s jailer, and I wonder why.
I realise much later that this was the point at which what started as a fantasy novel has become a psychological mystery. My experience of reading mysteries kicked in, but my ability to name the change did not - until Myfanwy Fox - our occasional guest writer and science fiction subject matter expert, suggested it.
But then, Myfanwy is also a poet, and as Plato once said, but in Greek, “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.”
In fact, the story cycles through various genres. Fantasy, mystery, gothic/occult, police procedural with an actual shoot out, philosophical allegory (Plato again) - all of these merge, mostly successfully, into a coherent story.
A story with layers upon layers of meaning.
At the beginning, Piranesi is simply contented with his lot - deprived as he is of simple things like shoes and food and reliant on The Other for so much. He has an almost religious reverence for The House, as he calls it.
As a reader, at the beginning I am just as ignorant and clueless as Piranesi appears - although I am alert for signs of an unreliable narrator, I tend to trust until there are clear reasons to doubt - but I very soon lost my initial trust in The Other. Piranesi is unreliable because of his naivety, and his amnesia, which prompts him to confabulate, not because he is naturally deceitful.
This is such a clever subversion of the usual that I am in awe - it is far more common for the unreliable narrator to be the deceitful one, hiding their own bad behaviour.
As I realised the extent of Piranesi’s memory loss - I wondered if The House was a form of the Renaissance and modern Sherlockian memory palace - a kind of aide-memoire for an amnesiac who had lost all touch with reality. He has so little grasp of his own history - and yet has the ability to map the tides, keep track of natural cycles, and somehow recognises the statues of things which don’t seem to actually exist in the world of The House.
I understood and empathised with Piranesi, because in reading, I was going through a version of his own experience.
The Other gradually gives himself away - or at least he does to those of us who aren’t babes in the wood. He is constantly asking things of Piranesi. He is convinced that The House contains all kinds of secret, occult knowledge, which he thinks is a source of power, and he pushes Piranesi to explore it on his behalf, to take risks he won’t take.
Eventually, after a long period in which these two characters are the only ones we see, Piranesi sees evidence of someone else who has been there, and recently.
He is excited, and tells The Other, who immediately sets about making Piranesi fear the new person, who Piranesi calls 16 (our archaeologist has discovered evidence of fifteen other inhabitants of the House, and has made a shrine of bones) and tries to talk this sweet, naive and empathic person into murder.
Piranesi, it seems, is not capable of such action - and discovers that 16 is called Rafael, and in the real world, the world he is beginning to suspect he has partial memories of, is a detective. She tells Piranesi his own history, and that he has been imprisoned in the House by The Other, who is called Ketterley.
Ketterley is also the name of the evil Uncle Andrew in CS Lewis’ Narnia novel, The Magician’s Nephew. Allusions to Narnia are scattered throughout - leaving me wanting to reread those novels again. (I read them so long ago I didn’t even notice The Problem With Susan, I was so young and naive!)
The novel briefly becomes puzzle-mystery - as Piranesi discovers the extent of his amnesia, reading stuff in his journal which he has even forgotten writing, about anthropologist/occultist/guru Lawrence Arne Syles. His previous self was writing a biography of Syles. This, it turns out, was how he encountered Ketterley - who imprisoned him in the House.
The story eventually turns into all-out thriller - with an actual shoot-out and a drowning - the violence instigated by Ketterley. Somehow this is actually the least effective and least interesting part of the novel.
The story ends with Piranesi - or Matthew Rose Sorensen - adjusting to living back in the real world but only because he can occasionally travel back to The House. He is no longer the brash and rather unpleasant investigative journalist he used to be, or the naive and spiritual Piranesi - but has an intention to reconcile both and become s new person.
For me, one of the most fascinating parts of the story is all the stuff about Laurence Arne Syles. He reminds me of Aleister Crowley - and all the Golden Dawn people like Yeats who got all caught up in spiritualism and magick with a k. Perhaps also Laurens van der Post, who had a touch of the guru and charismatic charlatan about him.
I would totally read a whole novel about Laurence Arne Syles.
As a reader, this complex, layered story is just a fascinating experience. I started out accepting Piranesi’s naive descriptions of his reality, and his touching trust in The Other/Ketterley.
My growing suspicions and then certainly that Ketterley was very much a wrong ‘un created lots of tension and suspense as I was reading. I was so worried for Piranesi. I was afraid that the fears stoked by Ketterley would lead him to murder. Or worse (I became attached to Piranesi) that he would end up even more of a victim himself.
It was oddly satisfying that he was beginning to turn into a more rounded person at the end of the novel, but still, I kind of missed Piranesi’ innocence, and it made me - yes, cynical suspicious old me - yearn for a world in which preserving such innocence might be possible.
What Can We Learn As Writers?
As ever, a main lesson is that you can break any rule at all (in this case I am thinking of the rule that you can’t combine lots of genres) - so long as you do it brilliantly.
That “so long as” does seem rather to reinforce the rule, alas.
I am in awe of Clarke’s brilliance in cheating us with that second quotation in her Preface.
‘People call me a philosopher or a scientist or an anthropologist. I am none of those things. I am an anamnesiologist. I study what has been forgotten. I divine what has disappeared utterly. I work with absences, with silences, with curious gaps between things. I am really more of a magician than anything else.’
Laurence Arne-Sayles, interview in The Secret Garden, May 1976
I didn’t even think of googling it until afterwards. How much we take for granted!
Also, she must have a real sense of fun! I feel so sure that she enjoyed writing this novel.
I couldn’t help but wonder - did Susanna Clarke work all this out first? In her head? Did she write an outline? Did she write a crap first draft and write dozens of drafts, adding all those layers of meaning, all that depth, each time?
Is it possible to lock her in a similar House, and use occult and magickal means to acquire her talent and craft?
Perhaps we just have to read and think and study how she does it - work out what we can steal and adapt for our own purposes in our own stories.
Which is, in the end, a great excuse to do what I have wanted to do since I first read it last year.
I’m going to start rereading Piranesi next week. I might check out the CS Lewis novel, The Magician’s Nephew, first, though.
I’m also going to remember to enjoy myself when writing the next novel.
Ann
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Down The Rabbit Hole
There’s so much good stuff been written about Piranesi, so here are just a few of my favourites, and some gratuitous extras
Susanna Clarke Shares The Inspiration for Piranesi
Interesting reading about Susanna Clarke from The New Yorker
A woman who can write stuff this brilliant with suffering some form of chronic fantigue/autoimmune disease with accompanying brain fog is beyond genius.
It wasn’t just me who was reminded of the Memory Palace
The FT - tantalising, enigmatic and profound
The Problem(s) with Susan - at Tor
The Problem with Susan - the Neil Gaiman story
Bjork warns us about poets (Sorry, Myfanwy. I couldn’t resist)
Aw, thanks for the mention re the genre switching. It amazed me, as I finished the book and wanted to think about it and hear what others thought about it, that none of the reviews I read anywhere discussed that. Did I imagine it? No, I think it's part of the magic of Piranesi's story. Clarke is so sure-footed of these movements as in every detail of the novel. It's a masterclass in creating mystery, suspense and mood.
Piranesi would have been my book of the year for 2021 by far if I hadn't incidentally also met Murderbot for the first time. 2021 was a crap year in so many ways but the reading made up for that - escapism of the best kind. I'll be delving delightedly down the rabbit hole extras above as soon as the day job lets up again.
PS "expert" might be a stretch. I'm not a proper sci fi nerd, just a part-time fan. Like you, I mix up my reading. I read a lot of sci fi in my teens, then mostly whodunnits and thrillers in my 20s, had kids in my 30s and then started writing at 40, when a mentor pushed me to widen my reading. Never too late to start. Despite writing sci fi, I've only started reading any quantity again very recently and there is so much amazing work to love.