My Cultural Diet

This was my second time reading Piranesi, in preparation for my church’s summer book club. I’d forgotten many of the details after my first read, though, so this felt like a brand new experience in some significant ways. Susanna Clarke’s second novel can seem affected at times, being an epistolary novel about a man trapped in a nigh-infinite arrangement of halls filled with marble statues and ocean waves. Once you embrace the book’s premise, though, Piranesi becomes a very delightful read, and the House becomes a place that you’d like to believe actually exists. There’s something quite charming about Clarke’s guileless protagonist, who beholds the House with reverence and is content to explore its seemingly limitless rooms and corridors and chronicle its elaborate statuary. Clarke slowly weaves in darker, more troubling facets, but they never fully override or diminish the story, which isn’t exactly light-hearted, but does possess a sense of grave whimsy. That Piranesi also works as a riff on C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and in particular, The Magician’s Nephew, only adds to its charm. Back in 2024, Laika Studios announced their plans to adapt Piranesi into an animated feature film, and I’m very curious to see how they’ll render the House in all of its otherworldly glory.

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