Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
May 2, 2021•171 words
★★★★½☆
Piranesi's setting is worthy of its namesake. It is an endless limbo of halls lined with marble statues in Tarot-like poses, infused with meanings we can only grasp at. Through these halls, on a calculable schedule, sweep gargantuan tides that wash away the old and bring new dangers and life. Sometimes, one finds human bones.
Piranesi's protagonist makes this fantasy/mystery a true love-letter to science. He has no memory and a scientist's heart. His records are meticulous, his progress measurable and his enthusiasm and vigour as unending as his strange home. What he cannot find or ask for, he invents. For fun as well as for meaning, he explores. He is naïve but this virtue excuses it and more.
The mystery element of this book is its weakest aspect, but the English academic-occult aesthetic is enjoyable enough to prop it up. However, it is best viewed as a vehicle for the perfect match of puzzle and puzzler that is Clarke's setting and protagonist.