Piranesi

 

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

- Piranesi

The world needs more books like this. If I could, I would give a copy to everyone to read. And then a discussion would ensue, because this book warrants talking about. You cannot read it and not want to talk with someone about it. It is easily my top book of 2020. I already read it a second time a few months ago, and it made me love it even more.

I mentioned reading it in a previous post, but it really needs its own dedicated appreciation post, which I have been meaning to do for awhile. If you have not read it yet, I hope this will get your curiosity heightened enough to go get it!

I cannot say too much about the story without giving things away. I would not want to spoil a reading for anyone, because part of the deep enjoyment is discovering along the way, so I will keep it pretty general. 

Piranesi lives in a house, a huge infinite house that takes care of him. He loves the house, and knows that it provides food and shelter for him. He keeps busy every day by writing in his journal keeping track of the tides that rush through the different halls of the house. He explores the house, numbering all the halls and their details, he notes all the statues in the halls, he fishes down in the lower halls where the waters are always abundant. But he is mostly all alone. Isolated. Except one other man, whom he meets with once a week, called the Other. The Other has Piranesi working on projects and collecting data for him as he tries to figure out the secrets of the house. 

Susanna Clarke is a master author. She is one of the best in our modern day in my opinion. Every word, every sentence has deep thought behind it. Even the use of capital letters is very intentional. There is nothing frivolous about her writing. It has meaning. She pulls from past authors and myths and makes a tale all her own, yet leaving crumbs along the way that I love picking up. In this book, she is pulling many ideas, mainly from The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis, Saving the Appearances, by Owen Barfield, and short stories from Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges. 

Piranesi thinks the best of what he is given, using everything the house provides. He appreciates the little things. He stands in awe of the albatross that flies into one of the halls (I hear lovely echoes of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). He takes care of the bones of the dead he finds in the house. He finds meaning in everything. This idea stems from Owen Barfield's ideas on participation and how in human history we used to think that everything had meaning. We have lost that meaning (we no longer participate in the world in that sense) in our modern culture. Things are now just objects to be studied and taken apart to find out how they work (to learn their secrets), rather than appreciating and finding meaning in how they were made. This bifurcation of meaning and purpose in the world we live in is the difference between Piranesi and the Other. 

The house itself is an infinite labyrinth, and Piranesi lives there alone, seemingly. He doesn't think it is menacing, but he knows there are dangers and takes precautions, such as when the tides will collide and cause a massive flood. There are other dangers he did not prepare for that soon come, and when the Other starts to warn him, he tries to solve the puzzle. Some questions I began to ask myself - How does being alone affect him? Why does the Other only see him once a week? Is the house good?

I love this book so much. It explores many themes that provoke deeper thinking and discussion on choices we make, why we make them, how we relate to the world around us, how an antidote to alienation is kindness,  how we are beckoned into reality through sadness and great loss, how we can hold up a lantern of light against the darkness and see the good even amidst the evil of the world.