Book Review: Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke (2020)
It’s been a very long wait for this book, the second novel from the author of the brilliant Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – sixteen years, to be precise. Piranesi is not like Susanna Clarke’s previous novel. In fact, it’s not like anything I’ve ever read before. To go into detail about the plot is probably not advisable… it would be a bit like stepping into a labyrinth, which just so happens to be the setting of this story – another world which consists of a never-ending series of halls, each one full of rows and rows of statues, with lower halls that are flooded by the sea, and upper halls where clouds and rains form. Yes, there is some serious imagination at play here! Within this endless labyrinth of halls lives ‘Piranesi’, who believes this is not really his name, but it is what ‘the Other’ – the only other living person in the world – likes to call him. Piranesi is aware of the past existence of fifteen other people, who he refers to as ‘his dead’. He sees ‘the Other...