I actually read this back in September but let it fall through the cracks, and haven’t rated or reviewed it until now. Part of me also just wanted to sit with it, alone, and see what happened.
I will say that I was verrrry close to giving this five stars. I was thoroughly charmed while reading it, very quickly began feeling a deep, affectionate love for Piranesi, and felt weird whenever I put the book back down. It kept pulling me back, and I was always thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it. Very weird feeling for a such a deceptively simple book. But then, the ending didn’t quite gel with me. And when I say the ending, what I mean is literally the last two pages of the book. I’d be interested to see what other people interpret as having happened there, because it just sort of landed with a dull thud in my head, although I can see glimpses of meaning in that final line. Anyway, that was weird, considering how well I got along with the entire rest of the book. Maybe it will click for me on re-read.
I’m not going to say much about the book itself in the main review space because you should go in knowing as little as possible. I only knew bare bones from a quick glance at the blurb, and things I’d picked up just from being on Goodreads all the time, and it was definitely better that way. It’s very different from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and not just because it’s less than 250 pages long. It’s not a flashy book, with lots of magic or action sequences. It’s more quiet, even when things are happening. It’s not going to be for everyone, but I really recommend giving it a go. I’m going to have to read it several more times I think before I really land on what I liked so much about it (without going into spoilers here).
More detailed thoughts under spoiler tag.
SPOILERS I felt a deep love for Piranesi, almost from the first. His curiosity, his kindness, his patience, and hard work, they just really got to me. There was also, I don’t quite know how to explain it, this feeling that he had a purity of spirit, and it was connected to the way he lived his life, and the way he viewed the House. My affection for him only grew as he grappled with the confusion of figuring out the truth. It also hurt more when I saw evidence of him forgetting, making mistakes, and misinterpreting things (like the Other’s feelings towards him). In a lot of ways, this thing that I was drawn to in him was very much connected with a focus on the “natural world,” and I use quotations because “nature” in the House is very different from what we think of as nature.
There was this moment in the book where Piranesi is reading his old journals, and the journal is talking about how Arne-Sayles and Ketterling are both looking to find the old ways, where you could communicate with nature and it would communicate back, and Piranesi’s just like, but I do that all the time? And he just moves on, and it was this hilarious thing where he’s clearly discovered, in a subtler way, what they’ve been looking for this whole time and it’s just no big deal to him.
It’s really masterful the way Clarke shows you things through Piranesi’s perspective that are very different from what he believes so you still get the whole picture of what’s going on without him being clued in as well. The metaphor of the house itself is where I’m reluctant to assign any meaning, at least for now. It’s kind of nice having it mean lots of nebulous things at the same time, and not worrying about pinpointing any of it.
This is also a book I’m sure that more than reward a close reading. Val Ketterling’s father, for instance, was named after Andrew Ketterling, a name which rang bells in my head, especially since Clarke used a quote from The Magician’s Nephew as an epigraph. Knowing who that character is gives you a clue as to who our Ketterling is. Also, it’s just fun to think about this being set in the same world as Narnia, because that whole book is about finding a world between worlds, which feels very similar to the House END SPOILERS.
I would be really interested to see what the inspiration for this story was in Clarke’s mind, and how she came up with the connection to 18th century etcher Giovanni Battista Piranesi. He was famous for his labyrinthine drawings, many of which featured endless columns, or winding stairways descending or ascending to nowhere, and lots and lost of statues. There probably wasn’t one single thing or moment, but it makes me want to read more about Piranesi as an artist.
[4.5 stars]