Book Review: Piranesi

 

•  Author: Susanna Clarke

• Where I bought this book: A Room of One's Own, Madison, Wisc. 

• Why I bought this book: I was looking for a title by a similarly named author, and came across this instead.

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        Yes, there is a story in here, and it's a wonderful one, so it's worth your while to get to it.

    But what keeps you going in this magical place are the descriptions. The fantastical, detailed discoveries behind every door, in every chamber and hall, filled with statues that delight and compel and charm. 

    Yes, Piranesi's wanderings are fun to follow. His attempts to divine the origins and implications of where he is keep the tale from his journals moving along.

    It's a remarkably strange place, even for a fantasy book. It could be a world inside a building, or a building that it a world. We don't know. We explore its ramifications with Piranesi, as he speaks to us through those writings.

    Piranesi is all but alone in the world. There is someone else, named The Other. There is evidence of other people who are or have been there, but it's all speculation, based on snippets of writings he has found.  

 One sentence puzzles me: The world was constantly speaking to Ancient Man. I do not understand why this sentence is in the past tense. The World still speaks to me every day.

    Indeed, the pleasure of this book is not the story of who Piranesi is and where he is, but the place itself, and the secrets it hides. Sometimes, the story actually gets in the way of the pleasure of reading this remarkable book.

    Yes, the secrets are revealed. It is well worth waiting for.