The palace of Clarke's imagination
Piranesi a source of wonder and awe
In 2004, Susanna Clarke's debut, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an 800-page work of historical fantasy about two magicians in 19th-century England, was dubbed “Harry Potter for adults.” But Clarke's literary ancestor is not really J.K. Rowling, it's Charles Dickens.
We believers have waited a long time for a second novel, and so it's exciting to see none of her enchantment has worn off — it's evolved in her lithe new book.
The highly circumscribed action takes place in a palace filled with an infinite labyrinth of halls and vestibules. The walls of all the rooms are decorated with statues: a vast inventory of sculptures, each representing an object, concept or feeling like a whole lexicon carved in marble.
The hypnotic quality of Piranesi stems largely from how majestically Clarke conjures up this surreal House. It's a world unto itself.
“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite,” the narrator says.
Clarke's narrator, a young man called Piranesi, seems to exist alone in this infinitude of watery rooms. Despite his intelligence, he has no conception of how or why he came to be here. Dressed in rags, he's Robinson Crusoe with no memory of shipwreck and no desire to escape — nor any sense elsewhere might exist. He tends the bones of several others. He measures time by the arrival of an albatross, one of many birds that pass through the House. His waking hours are devoted to describing his observations in a meticulous journal.
Perhaps Clarke's cleverest move in this infinitely clever novel is how she critiques our obliterating efforts to extract deeper meaning and greater value from our world. In the middle of his study, Piranesi arrives at a revelation, conveyed in his usual tone of guileless wisdom:
“The search for the Knowledge,” he says, “has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery. The sight of the One-hundred-and-ninety- Second Western Hall in the Moonlight made me see how ridiculous that is. The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.”
If little Jack from Emma Donoghue's Room had stayed trapped in that garden shed until he was 35, he might sound something like Piranesi, a man of boundless curiosity and delight but with a mind fed only by the details of his containment.
This is the abiding magic of Clarke's novel: We're as likely to pity Piranesi for his cheerful acceptance of imprisonment as we are to envy him for his ready appreciation of the world as he finds it. To abide in these pages is to find oneself happily detained in awe.