I just know I can’t really do this book justice. I love it and writing about it immediately takes some of the magic away but I suppose if Susannah Clarke could do it, I can at least try.
Who is Piranesi? Where is he?
He is writing this book as a journal from a place that is both a world and a house. This house has tides. This world has floors and wings and grand halls. There are ballrooms and statues and sweeping staircases that are underwater as the tides change.
Piranesi navigates the halls as the moon cycles to anticipate the waters. He salvages bones and seaweed to wear in his tangled hair. He visits his favored statues as honored ancestors. He lives as a recluse, who is both aware of and in respectful fear of the Other.
This Other shows himself occasionally to bestow gifts or shower food as tokens from above.
It becomes increasingly more apparent that Piranesi is less alone than he thought. There may have been others here before him.
He finds human bones. Animal bones. His anthropological worship of these, honoring them with flowers, is touching.
What is really happening around him?
He appears innocently unaware of something much more sinister. Is someone named Ketterley attempting to control the uncontrollable?
From the journals that become less unfettered in their hallucinations, we see patterns. We see hints at something.
Where are these offerings really coming from? Who is this ‘other’ person? Who indeed is Piranesi? It has a very Neil Gaiman-esque otherworldly tone that I like and mixed with very concise, interesting writing, sets a fascinating—almost scientific—perspective.
It reads like a lab journal from an experiment, which we find out is very close to a truth.
It’s just wonderful to be in Piranesi’s mind as he unravels the mystery of the magnificent world.
About the author: Jen Petty Hilger grew up in New York and London, England, but finds herself happily quiet living by the water in Old Lyme.
She and her husband have six children between them and a myriad of rescued animals.