Books of the year
BOOK OF THE DAY
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke review – an elegant study in solitude
The Jonathan Strange author returns with a mysterious tale that examines the nature of fantasy itself
Paraic O'Donnell
Thu 17 September 2020
“T
he beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite”: this is the reverent pronouncement of Piranesi, who believes he has occupied the house in question “since the world began”. Indeed, the house and the world, for Piranesi, are one and the same. Birds congregate in its cloud-wreathed upper halls and fearsome tides surge through its lower levels, but although Piranesi has journeyed widely – as far as “the Nine-Hundred-and-Sixtieth Hall to the West” – he has glimpsed nothing beyond it. And but for the bones of the dead, and an enigmatic visitor known only as “the Other”, he wanders this world entirely alone.
Susanna Clarke is a writer who has never quite been given her due. She is hardly obscure, of course; her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, became a worldwide bestseller and was given a plush TV adaptation by the BBC. But its lingering influence – perhaps all the more notable for her long quiescence – has not been fully appreciated. Infusing “great tradition” verisimilitude with the imaginative radicalism of Ursula Le Guin, it gave rise to what might be called magical archaism, a fictional strain that has since become widespread. Like Hilary Mantel, Clarke made the very notion of genre seem quaint.
