I really adored Susanna Clarke’s first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell; it’s a dense, intelligent, extremely long, baroque, digressive, discursive, complicated, alternative history / fantasy / historical novel, a nineteenth century throwback, with archaic spelling, footnotes, and intricate complexities of plot, maximalist and overstuffed. 

It was a long wait for her second novel, 16 years. The author has been suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, too ill to do much writing, and unable to complete her planned sequel to Jonathan Strange. But at last we were given Piranesi, which is nothing like the first one in style. This is a slim volume with few characters, and it’s slow moving, contemplative, almost meditative, peaceful, and quite beautiful. It is also fantastical, but does not appear to be set in the same fictional universe as Jonathan Strange. No matter that it’s very different; it is also extremely good.

Piranesi, the title character, is virtuous and kind and naive, absolutely pure of heart. He’s too good for this world; and in fact, he isn’t in this world, but in a very strange one, wild and yet beautiful. It’s hard to describe much without giving away crucial plot points which the reader would do better to uncover during the course of the novel. It’s probably best for the reviewer, then, to just describe some themes: magic and the harm it can do in the hands of the unscrupulous, knowledge lost to time, the corruption that can come with power, the beauty and the loneliness of isolation, transcending trauma. There are literary connections here to C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, especially The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Piranesi reminds me a bit of some of Shirley Jackson’s work, and of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go–not because of any similarity of plot or style, but because it is, in many ways, a horror story in which the protagonist simply doesn’t realize that he’s in one.  

During the COVID lockdown, this uncanny tale of solitude and resilience was particularly resonant, but I think it’s worth reading anytime. Thanks to Ms. Clarke for this lovely and peculiar novel. I hope very much that her health continues to improve.

HOW TO PURCHASE: AMAZON

NOVEL: Piranesi

AUTHOR: Susanna Clarke

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2020

LEAD-IN IMAGE

Book cover - Bloomsbury Publishing