Piranesi

Susanna Clarke's Tribute to Lewis?

Dear Friends,

Step into my study. Shall I fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent!

Novelist Susanna Clarke is rather new to me. I once picked up her critically acclaimed Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but at the time it proved too laborious for me to really engage. My sense was that she is fascinated by the mass revival of the occult in 19th century Britain—the fascination with the “Other World”—and uses that as the backdrop for her tales. It’s a very rich backdrop, too, allowing one to explore deep philosophical questions about faith and reason, science and superstition, and metaphysics generally (is there an “Other” world?). It’s all quite promising. I just haven’t had the time or inclination to tackle such a large novel.

Thankfully, Clarke wrote a shorter one. I picked up Piranesi the other day and it took me about three total hours to devour. I recall that this novel got quite a bit of critical acclaim, and I can see why. Piranesi is pretty much a modern masterpiece.

I will try to share some appreciation for it here without overly spoiling anything.

The very first epigram on the first page of the novel subtly indicates what this book is going to be about. It is a quote from Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, talking about how he is the magician in need of someone to do magic on. The book is in many ways a tribute to C.S. Lewis. Piranesi, the protagonist who narrates the book by way of journal in the first person, at one point is looking at a statue of a faun, one of his favorites, and mentions that he once had a dream about a faun talking to a girl in the snow. Lovely. The faun even makes the cover of the book. And the whole setting of the “House,” a massive empty labyrinth of crumbling marble and stone, with vaulted room after vaulted room with statues of people, seems to me inspired by Digory and Polly’s trip to the Land of Charn in The Magician’s Nephew.