Piranesi

An odd little book.

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Based on the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an artist who lived in the 18th century, the book is set in a parallel universe comprised of a seemingly infinite number of crumbling halls and vestibules, three layers high, in the four directions.

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On every surface of every wall are marble statues, some smaller than life-size, others many meters high. In some of the lower halls, rubble has closed off certain vestibules and the rain has created fresh-water pools. Clouds gather in the higher levels. Periodically, the tide brings swells of ocean water.

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I am determined to explore as much of the World as I can in my lifetime. To this end I have travelled as far as the Nine-Hundred-and-Sixtieth Hall to the West, the Eight-Hundred-and-Ninetieth Hall to the North and the Seven-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eighth Hall to the South. I have climbed up to the Upper Halls where Clouds move in slow procession and Statues appear suddenly out of the Mists. I have explored the Drowned Halls where the Dark Waters are carpeted with white water lilies. I have seen the Derelict Halls of the East where Ceilings, Floors – sometimes even Walls! – have collapsed and the dimness is split by shafts of grey Light.

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The book is told from the perspective of young man who lives alone in the House, who doesn’t remember who he is or how he got there.

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Twice a week, another man, called the Other, comes for short conversations. The Other uses the man of the House, who he calls Piranesi, to gather information for him about the House.

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Piranesi’s journal entries are how the story is told and how his reality unravels.

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In my mind Raphael is better represented by a statue in an antechamber that lies between the forty-fifth and the sixty-second northern halls. This statue shows a figure walking forward, holding a lantern. It is hard to determine with any certainty the gender of the figure; it is androgynous in appearance.

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From the way she (or he) holds up the lantern and peers at whatever is ahead, one gets the sense of a huge darkness surrounding her; above all I get the sense that she is alone, perhaps by choice or perhaps because no one else was courageous enough to follow her into the darkness.

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It’s odd because the first half of the book is one journal entry after another of the reality of living alone in the house. The text is full of off-kilter capitalization and I got bored of it, frankly.

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It’s not until half way in that the story begins introducing new elements and the style shifts.

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Valentine Ketterley, psychologist and anthropologist, has disappeared. The police have made inquiries and discovered that before his disappearance he made some unusual purchases: a gun, an inflatable kayak and a life-jacket – purchases that his friends all agree were completely out of character: he had never shown any inclination to be waterborne before.

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We see the entire picture at the end, but the person ends up living fractured within himself.

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It’s a melancholy ending that is so subtle that it doesn't really satisfy.

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This book won the 2021 Women’s Prize for fiction (Women's Prize?) but would have been better as a graphic novel.

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Recommended for people with a very good imagination.

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