He is without a single evil cell in his body. Ultimately, Piranesi is extremely one dimensional. The second reason for the excessive and largely useless exposition in the first act may have been to catch the reader off guard and then slam him with a character and story, which may have seemed more mundane if the book started with those. That’s when I understood that I was thinking just like the intruders in the labyrinth, while its inhabitant had his brain wired in a different way, and I began to appreciate Piranesi’s mental processes a little more. When he explains the same dead people to the Other and later to the old man, they both zone out just like I did.
The most obvious one would be to make the reader more sympathetic to Piranesi. That may have had several purposes, though. He sounds mentally challenged, and he spends so much time describing various statues and the remains of the dead people that I zoned out here. From the beginning, it is evident how unreliable a narrator Piranesi is. It introduces us to Piranesi, the narrator and protagonist, as he describes the labyrinth and his diaries to great detail. The first act was very laborious, and I almost put the book down. This wasn’t true from the beginning, though. Somehow, I managed to completely immerse myself in the book without questioning the author. It was only after I finished the book, I started asking myself questions on the origin of the labyrinth, the greater truths that the researchers have been looking for, the actual effects on the mental wellbeing of its occupants, and many other elements of the worldbuilding. The way this novel is written in some way makes the reader take everything for granted.
The narrative is pure simplicity: a largely linear story (albeit presented in disjointed timing), very straightforward characters who don’t evolve even under the most strenuous circumstances, and absolutely no fluff around. Doing that is surprisingly easy, as is reading the rest of the book. The plot is actually pretty straightforward, but half of the fun of reading this book is trying to piece together what had actually happened. It is unlike me to not reveal the entire plot in my reviews, but I made a rare exception here. In the finale, the Other is killed in a tidal wave as he tries to shoot Piranesi and Sixteen, and Piranesi is reintroduced to our world. When the new person, whom Piranesi labeled as Sixteen, arrives, she fills in the last blanks on Piranesi’s true identity and the role of the Other.
#PIRANESI SUSANNA CLARKE ILLUSTRATIONS FULL#
Piranesi, in his degraded mental state, struggles to understand the full picture, but the reader starts getting a good idea of the other world Piranesi is living in, and how he got there. Piranesi has been keeping a diary for years, and now he searches his earliest diaries for the names the old man mentioned. Instead, Piranesi meets an old man who throws around names of strange people. If this happens, the Other would have to kill Piranesi to protect himself. One day, the Other warns him that another person may come look for Piranesi and confuse him to the point of madness. He takes care of them, leaving them offerings and speaking to them. In addition to the Other, Piranesi counts another thirteen people, all dead and desiccated, strewn around the labyrinth. Occasionally, Piranesi requests items, such as new shoes from the Other, and he delivers them. The only other person he meets is the Other, who tasks him with things like mapping a certain portion of the labyrinth or taking photos of certain rooms. He lives there almost alone, surviving on fish and seaweed. It stretches seemingly indefinitely in all directions, with its halls, atriums, staircases and rooms full of marble statues, with the sea flooding some of the rooms, and tides forcing Piranesi to move from one place to another. It’s been a true pleasure to read this book. It’s a very human story with an eminently likable protagonist and fascinating worldbuilding. Ultimately, Piranesi is a cute little story that feels inconsequential within its large and strange universe. Or the writing, which prepares you for tedium and disappointment in the first act, only to explode into a fascinating story with twists that are usually expected, but still inexplicably satisfying. Maybe it’s the very pleasant protagonist. I don’t know what makes this little book so appealing.
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