Piranesi

Susanna Clarke, 2020

Summary

Piranesi lives in a place called the House, a world composed of infinite halls and vestibules lined with statues, no two of which are alike. The upper level of the House is filled with clouds, and the lower level with an ocean, which occasionally surges into the middle level following tidal patterns that Piranesi meticulously tracks. He believes he has always lived in the House, and that there are only fifteen people in the world, most of whom are long-dead skeletons. Piranesi records every day in his journals, the text of which comprises the novel.

Twice a week, Piranesi meets with the Other, a well-dressed man who enlists his help to search for a “Great and Secret Knowledge” hidden somewhere in the House. The Other occasionally brings Piranesi supplies that seem to originate from outside the House, such as shoes, electric torches, and multivitamins. When Piranesi suggests that they abandon the quest for the Great and Secret Knowledge, the Other says they have had this conversation before, and warns Piranesi that the House slowly erodes one’s memories and personality.

The Other warns Piranesi that a sixteenth person, whom both call “16,” may enter the House to do him harm, and that he must not approach 16 under any circumstances or he will lose his sanity. Piranesi meets an elderly stranger he calls the Prophet, who identifies the Other as Ketterley, a rival who stole his ideas about the Knowledge. The Prophet claims that the House is a “distributary world,” formed by ideas flowing out of another world. He declares he will lead 16 to the House in order to hurt Ketterley.

While indexing his journals, Piranesi discovers references to entries he doesn’t remember writing which include terms mentioned by the Prophet. The entries tell the story of an occultist from the modern world named Laurence Arne-Sayles who posited that other worlds existed and could be accessed; Ketterley was one of his students. Arne-Sayles fostered a cult-like mentality among his followers and was eventually imprisoned for kidnapping a man named James Ritter. Ritter later described being held captive in a place resembling the House.

Piranesi discovers that 16 has entered the House, and leaves a message for them. Piranesi avoids reading 16’s reply, but interactions with the Other reveal that she is a woman named Raphael. After learning that a rare confluence of tides will soon flood the middle level of the House, Piranesi leaves a warning for 16, and discovers a message from her asking “are you Matthew Rose Sorensen?” Reading the name gives Piranesi a vision of standing in a modern city.

Further research in Piranesi’s journals reveals that someone has destroyed all entries relating to Ketterley. Piranesi pieces the destroyed pages back together from scraps he finds in gull nests, and learns the true story of how he came to the House: he was Matthew Rose Sorensen, a journalist writing a book about Arne-Sayles. When Sorensen went to interview Ketterley, Ketterley used a ritual to imprison him in the House, where he slowly lost his memory and constructed a new identity which Ketterley mockingly named Piranesi.

On the day of the flood, Piranesi confronts Ketterley with his reclaimed memories just as Raphael returns to find him. Ketterley tries to kill them both, but drowns in the floodwaters. After the water recedes, Raphael explains that she is a police detective investigating disappearances related to the Arne-Sayles cult. She asks Piranesi to return to his home world. After long deliberation, he elects to leave the House.

In an epilogue, the narrator has adjusted to living in his home world, but often returns to the House. The narrator brings James Ritter back to visit the House, tends to Ketterley’s body, and joins Raphael when she visits the House. He reflects that he is no longer quite Sorensen or Piranesi, but must construct a third identity from the remnants of the other two.

Thoughts

Clarke’s novel is a fine act of world-building by suggestion – the halls and statues and tides that populate its surreal world are sculpted in relief, and with each page the background slowly gains detail and clarity as the mystery of Piranesi’s world unfolds. This novel is as tightly scoped and narrowly told as Clarke’s previous novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, is sweeping. The narrative thrust seems inversely proportional to Piranesi’s desire to understand his own story. He is curious though, building complex tide charts and an encyclopedia of halls and their statues. He is a selfless, anti-ego hero, one whose memory only has space for the world he inhabits and not the person he is.

There are many ways to read the novel, an ode to a simpler time when nature and life were inextricably linked, or as a meditation on the ephemerality of selfhood, a willful amnesiac imprisoned in a labyrinth of statues and birds. Regardless of how you read it, it is immensely readable; and in a complex world vying for precious attention, the world that Clarke builds is well worth spending time in, even if only briefly.