Tildes Book Club discussion - Piranesi
This is the second of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Piranesi.
Our next book will be Ursula le Guin the Dispossessed, around the 16th or 17th of May.
I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.
For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.
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Would you add @kej to future book club posts, please? Thanks! (Still working my way through Piranesi so I'm avoiding the rest of this thread for a few more days.)
Happy to. Our next book is the Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin, followed by Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
Could I be added (@lazerworf) to the next future posts as well?
I didn't join this one as I had read Piranassi a while back, but am excited about The Dispossessed and Project Hail Mary!
Absolutely
What a marvellous book. I really enjoyed how we were dropped into the mind of Piranesi - or rather - the Beloved Child of the House. We the reader spend time in that world, and learn to understand it as the real world just as Piranesi does.
The author offers hints throughout as to what was going on, but they're subtle at first. For example the contrast in how Piranesi acts compared the Other. Piranesi has completely adapted to this world and has dedicated himself to it. The Other however was never interested in exploring or understanding his environment. It is just a place for him; a curiosity. Not a home.
The hints become more opaque as the book goes on. The frequent disappearances of the Other. Mentions of the occult and rituals. The nonchalant way in which the Other is able to acquire items like shoes. His attitude and disregard for Piranesi's well-being.
That attitude I think is the biggest clue. It becomes a symbol for all the negativity of our world. His pessimism and manipulation is constantly punctuated by Piranesi's own relentless optimism. He desires to see the best in people, even though we (the selfish, embittered humans reading this) can easily see he is being taken advantage of. This contrast shows us the biggest difference in these people, and the worlds they represent. I found this both inspiring and heartbreaking.
Later, when Piranesi begins to understand what is going on, he still frames everything within his own framework of thinking. I found this added to the believability of the character. When he imagines a different world, it is somebody else's collection of halls. What statues might they hold? Surely there could not be more than 50 or 60 people there!
I found the writing style to be very enjoyable overall. The dedication to completely and accurately describing the exact halls and vestibules that every event took place. I can understand that some might be bored by these descriptions, but I almost felt like I could imagine the map in my head. With the three different layers, the giant staircases and roaring tides. I listened to the audiobook and it really allowed me to imagine deeply the world in which Piranesi inhabited.
The pacing felt right, with enough time being spent on world building but without overstaying its welcome. Actually the book felt like a perfect length for me. While this may be the end of Piranesi's story, there are still other worlds out there. Perhaps we will get to explore more of them in the future.
I think Piranesi was a great pick for a book, and I really enjoyed it. I hope you all did too!
May your paths be safe, your floors unbroken, and may the house fill your eyes with beauty.
Also the other sees a source of power, a resource to be exploited and tapped.
There's something about metaphysical houses, as a subject, that I'm a sucker for. Probably because I read 'House of Leaves' in high school, and even though 'Piranesi' isn't nearly so dark or postmodern, it was an easy choice to read after I saw it nominated for Tildes Book Club. And sure enough, 'Piranesi's descriptions of sprawling Byzantine halls full of marble statues and strewn, mysteriously, with seawater and birds and clouds, forming an isolated ecosystem unto itself - that really scratches a specific itch. I felt it easy to inhabit this bittersweet dreamworld. A world without politics, social perplexities, television, traffic sounds pleasant enough, and with 'Piranesi's initial mysteries (the 'other', scattered skeletons, a missing origin story) enough was provided for me to ponder while still enjoying this alternate reality's relative peace.
Once the story was in full swing, I grew conflicted. On one hand, the tension kept me invested, wondering what would happen next, and some of the hints and clues were fun to mull over. But I felt that altogether too much was explained by the end of the book. That is a very difficult balance to strike in any book of this style, especially since explaining too little can leave the audience feeling unsatisfied. I'll also grant that 'Piranesi' uses its full explanation to communicate an interesting message, with the first half sort of asking us these questions about identity and memory and purpose, and the end letting us see how much courage and trust are required to really answer them.
It wasn't until I had finished the book that I read a little bit about the author, Susanna Clarke. It turns out that she suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and that her work on 'Piranesi' was definitely shaped by the limitations of this illness. All of the sudden, everything clicked into place for me. I also suffer from (severe) CFS, and there are some really specific parallels that I had only appreciated half-subliminally while reading the book. To illustrate: I spend 98% of my time lying down either in my bed or on a couch. I virtually never leave my apartment. Since getting sick, I have very little direct experience with the world - only what I see in movies and television, read in books, etc. I live with my girlfriend, who is at work most of the day, and I only see other people face-to-face infrequently. My day-to-day is mostly about survival and passing time. In many ways, my house IS Piranesi's house - calm, lonely, full of sterile images.
I've had many people ask me 'how can you live like this?' and really, the answer is you can't. At least, 'you' can't, and you really need to become another 'you' in order to tolerate the boredom, pain, isolation, etc. of a severe chronic illness like this. I was 30 years old when I developed CFS, just when I really began to feel like I had figured myself out, and now four years later, I'm a whole different 'myself'. Moreover, I've always wondered what would happen if I suddenly recovered, out of nowhere. I like to think I'd just as suddenly recover all my old personality, my goals in life, my joie de vivre. But I can't even remember what half of those things are like. Maybe the process would be less immediate and less complete than I should hope. I'm a hostage of my illness, and maybe a part of me is too comfortable with my current level of suffering to embrace change, even such a good, healthy change. Piranesi himself faces a similar dilemma at the end of the book, and I find the decision he makes rather heartening. All in all, 'Piranesi' became a much more meaningful book for me after picking up on these elements.
I wanted first to share sympathy with your condition. CFS sounds extremely difficult and I wish you the best. Reading your post also made me think about my own experience of reading the book. I would dive into it when I could just to get out of my world and spend time in the World of the House, even if only for a few minutes. For those minutes, I could escape.
The plot, the writing, the characters, and so on were all wonderful, but, I suppose like Ritter and Sorensen, I just wanted to go back to the House. Reflecting on the experience of being confined by disability that you write about... I can see those themes now in the book. Ritter and Sorensen are both confined against their will to the House, but then they both want to go back once they leave. Arne-Sayles and Ketterley only see the House from the perspectives of what they might gain from it. Would they have been happier if they had let themselves see the House as Sorensen did? Was Sorensen trapped in the House or was Ketterley trapped by his ambitions? Who suffered the greater confinement?
I never would have though of myself as trapped in my own life, but what does it say if I only wanted to escape from it whenever I could?
(I read this book a little while ago. I write my reviews as memory aids without intending to share them, so forgive me if it's a little fragmentary/fanboy-y :) )
Piranesi Review
This novel was a reminder of everything I love about Susanna Clarke
Clarke doesn’t bother to state, “This man is a prisoner of the Halls” until halfway through the book. She doesn’t have to. It’s something the reader realizes slowly over the first hundred or so pages, beginning with the references to real world dates (2012) and objects (does the Other have a smartphone? How does Piranesi have fishing nets?)
“How can this man possess knowledge of angels, gardens, etc. if he lives in an alternate universe full of endless marble halls? How can he have journals? What is going on?”
It’s because you take Susanna Clarke seriously as a writer and trust her to not just handwave away these inconsistencies that you realize the terrible truth: this man is a prisoner from our world and he has lost his mind
The way she creates an utterly convincing world of endless, dizzyingly complex halls (I instantly gave up trying to track which hall was which or which statues were where) and then subtly cues the reader to recognize, “Actually, this world doesn’t really make sense,” is brilliant
The mystery surrounding Laurence Arne-Sayles and his followers is doled out piece by piece, and I devoured every portion of it
Although, I thought it was a little trite to make Laurence gay (“Those sordid, queer academics are always preying on our kids!”)
What do you think the destroyed portions of the House represent?
There are the Derelict Halls to the East of the First Vestibule where everything is destroyed, and Piranesi barely talks about it, other than the fact that he fishes there in the lakes that form there.
There are also the various sections of the Western Halls that he mentions that have had ceilings collapse.
I really enjoyed this novel. The prose is beautiful, and engenders an appropriate sense of mystery and wonder. The main character is really quite likeable, and the audiobook narrator's soothing voice is perfect for him.
I muse that the characters Piranesi and Matthew Rose Sorensen would have written different versions of the story; which different readers might have enjoyed more, depending on genre preference. Once the setting was established, the novel could have focused either on the mystery of the halls themselves (leaning to sci-fi), or on the mystery of our main character's situation (leaning to drama).
I, like the Piranesi persona, wanted to learn more about the house. Why is it the way it is? Why this particular layout, why these statues? Is there a deeper meaning or puzzle to it all? These questions are not answered in the novel to the extent that I yearned for. The house is just a pocket universe where the plot happens. The main character does recognise that real people resemble the statues, but this doesn't seem to be explored any further.
The story focused on character drama instead, which would have been Matthew Rose Sorensen's priority: who is our main character? How did he get here? Who can he trust? Will he ever get home, recover his mind, and reclaim his life? This aspect of the story is fully explored and resolved, and we get a beautiful conclusion for our main character.
The story I wanted wasn't written, but another very good one was written instead. I chose Piranesi's perspective. The author chose Matthew Rose Sorensen's.
The other story I would like to read is the same thing told from Sarah Raphael's point of view. Tracking down what happened to MRS, then discovering the other world, the difficulty of convincing MRS to leave, etc, etc. And while we're on a wish list, some indie game developer needs to make a Piranesi-inspired Animal Crossing-style video game, where you live in The House and catch fish, talk to the birds, observe them to find out vital clues, calculate the tides, discover interesting statues, and map out the vestibules. All while gradually discovering the truth, or perhaps deliberately forgetting it.
By not knowing anything about The House or what it meant, it reminded me vaguely of Solaris. In that story the alien planet is not understood by the scientists, they can only describe and catalogue what they observe. Like in Piranesi, the world's strangeness apparently turns some people mad, although it maybe isn't madness because the reader doesn't have all the facts. In another parallel, parts of Solaris use epistolary techniques - reports from old expeditions, news clippings, articles from research books - to reveal information. In Piranesi the missing information comes from MRS's journals. Piranesi's ending is far more satisfying than Solaris though, which stays true to the nature of the story and has a disappointing conclusion that doesn't answer any of its mysteries.
Oh, cool. The audiobook was narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor. I can definitely see his dulcet tones working great for the novel! :P
Had I known he was narrating it, I might have listened to the audiobook instead of reading it myself. Although I may still go back and listen to it anyways just to see if it changes how I perceive the novel and characters.
I found the narration of the audiobook to be excellent. The accents and pacing were top notch throughout the whole reading.
Yes, agreed. I liked the way he changed the tone subtly for The Other. The cold dismissive "oh, not this again" and so on, compared to Piranesi's wide-eyed and joyous voice. He even did a passable Yorkshire accent near the end for the detective.
I really enjoyed this book. The first page had me thinking it was going to be a rough start, to the point I took a picture of the first page to make fun of it later, since it reminded me of the XKCD comic about authors making up words. No made up words, but the flowery description of the year, along with a ton of words being capitalized made me think it was going to be that style of book. I'm glad I was proven wrong as only a few pages later with the section titled "A list of all of the people who have ever lived and what is known of them" really clicked with me, and instead of all the capitalized words being some overwrought fantasy society with weird rules, it's just how some person is making sense of an incomprehensible world.
I enjoyed how we find out bits and pieces from his interactions with the Other and how Piranesi is incapable of piecing together some clues because of how the House affects his memory. I found it highly amusing when he was listing the things that the Other gave him and one of them was a ham and cheese sandwich, since as the reader, to this point, we only know about seaweed, fish and mussels for nutrients and Piranesi has no questions about where a ham and cheese sandwich came from?
I was a little disappointed in how the mystery of the house is resolved, with the information just being given to us via Piranesi's journal entries and eventual escape to the real world. I'm a sucker for interesting worldbuilding and figuring out how things work, so to just being given the answers, and the answer effectively being "Pagan magic rituals are real" rubbed me the wrong way. It reminded me how I felt reading the last quarter of Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" where we had a ton of really cool worldbuilding and interesting mystery stuff is going on, and then the explanation for everything is similarly out of left field.
And I think that was why I was disappointed when the real world was introduced (I think specifically when we saw that his journal was labeled 2012), because all I wanted was a cozy exploration adventure throughout the House and all of it's various wonders. He finds a tree leaf in the water at one point, and we never get to know where it came from.
That being said, I did really like the ending that Piranesi himself got. Throughout the entire book, you kind of know he was trapped there and his memory is being messed with, but at the same time he is so peaceful and happy. Piranesi realizing he is actually two consciousness's in one, with Matthew being asleep inside himself made me happy, as the consciousness of Piranesi's is it's own separate thing, and is happy in it's own right. (Although, someone with two personalities saying "Neither he nor I had ever been mad" made me laugh). "Saving" him by bringing him to the real world would potentially just kill him to bring Matthew back. So when he does actually go back, we instead get a third consciousness that is a combination of the other two, while the other two still being discreet in his mind (In the real world there's some quotes along the lines of "Piranesi wants to say: ..."). Also, it made me happy that Poor James Ritter (always with the "Poor" title) gets a somewhat happier ending with Piranesi bringing him back to the House and him crying with joy.
This book inspired a lot of enthusiasm. What is your take? Before looking at prompts, what do you want to say about Piranesi and how it impacted you? What did you take away from this book?
I loved this book so much when I read it. I'm not really a prose person, if it weren't for internet discussions I probably would never have noticed that Robin Hobb writes individual sentences nicer than Brandon Sanderson for example, but occasionally there are books that stand out so much that I just appreciate how the words are written, and this was one of them. Piranesi is such a calm person, and this reads so beautifully.
My favorite individual moment in the book is near the end when he's making himself look super nice and braids all kinds of stuff into his hair and the policewoman is like "oh my god", really fantastic depiction of cultures clashing
Sorry for being late, I kind of forgot to read the book, mostly it is has been chaotic lately, but got it done today.
I really liked this book, from the characters, Piranesi is a great unreliable narrator considering what had happened to him. What I mean is that the fact that we were reading his journals from his time in the Other World and his thoughts of what had transpired and his slow realization that the Other was not his friend and that he had lost his memory because of his time spent in the Other World. And the fact that 16 was in fact trying to help him get out of that situation.
Being late is not a problem. Next month we will discuss the Dispossessed but there is no hard deadline to end this discussion any more than any other thread here.
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Looking forward to the next discussion, I just put a hold on a copy at my library. And thanks for doing this.
I really enjoyed this book, it really becomes a page turner when it's spelled out that Piranesi is being manipulated by The Other and he starts questioning his sanity. Everything from the misnumbered journals to the gaslighting. After all we see just how far he's gone, and I was like the person yelling at the TV when upon rescue was thinking about maybe staying.
I really enjoyed how the book dropped you in the middle of the story. Lately, I have been really into reading series of books - I know most of the characters already, so backstory isn't needed. It was a little jarring at first not understanding anything about the main character, but I really enjoyed that I, as the reader, discovered Piranesi's past as he was discovering it himself.
What are your thoughts and reactions regarding the prose/writing style?
Initially, I was a bit annoyed at the random capitalization of letters, but it really grew on me. Words that are capitalized are just concepts that that are intrinsic to the House and don't come from elsewhere. I feel like it is slightly more complex than just giving capitalization to things to make them proper nouns like how "Other" is capitalized when referring to Val.
Randomly scanned until I found a sentence with an egregious amount of capitalization for an example:
Was there ever an explained reason for the random capitalized letters? It was super distracting at the beginning and I was looking for some pattern. After a while I gave up and I assumed it was part of him going crazy from being in the world for too long.
From the author:
cc: @syllo
I’ve never felt more conflicted about a writing style. The long-winded references to dates and rooms really turned me off e.g. “the 92nd room north west of the room where this thing happened” or “the twelfth day of the seventh month of the year the albatross appeared”. I feel like it was very justified and made sense in the fiction, but as a reader I found myself constantly skimming over descriptions and that annoyed me. She’s clearly a very good writer, but I found some of her choices unenjoyable even if they were warranted.
I ended up skimming over all the date and room location descriptions eventually too. As you said, it made sense and was appropriate for the character to write in his journals, but after seeing the same things repeated over and over it felt a bit redundant.
It was difficult to get into, but as you got used to the writing style that Clarke had used, it was a quicker read than I was expecting.
As for the random capitalization's of letters, I think it was Piranesi genuinely giving things names, such as the rooms and what is going in said rooms. Which really highlights that he really cared about that world and genuinely believed that he was originally from that world.
What do you think of Piranesi's ultimate choice and process of making that choice?
I was hoping so much that Piranesi would leave the house at the end, even if it was only for a little while. I understood his reasons for wanting to stay at first. I was kind of sad that he felt like he was missing things in either world, but I do feel like he realized the beauty of the real world at the end.
It also makes things easier that he was able to actively jump between the two worlds at the end of the book.
Yeah, I'm really glad that was the case. I would have felt awful for him if he had had to choose between the two, and could never have returned to the Labyrinth afterwards. Him being able to bring "poor James Ritter" back to visit it, so he finally knew he wasn't crazy, was a lovely way to end the novel too.
That's interesting, because I had the opposite reaction. I really wanted Piranesi to stay in the House, and was scared for him to leave as there was the potential for the Piranesi personality to be destroyed if Matthew took back over. In my mind, Matthew was already "dead" and bringing him back would only cause suffering for the both of them as Matthew's mind would be broken like Poor James Ritter's mind.
Piranesi was the only one truly able to see the wonder in the House, and if he was no longer able to do that, there would probably never be another person able to explore as much as him without condemning them to mental collapse as well.
I wish he never went back after. While it makes sense that he'd want to go back, I feel like instead of the more interesting question of how to readjust to normal life, they can instead just go back whenever like it was some theme park. I guess it's fitting for an ending, but to me that world felt like a horror show/prison . At the end I was like "so is this open to the public now?"
But to Piranesi it wasn't a horrible place, he knew the danger of staying there now, but still liked the House for its beauty etc etc. When the policewoman said they were "just statues" when compared to the real things, he got annoyed by that. I felt like he was only visiting our world for the sake of the people that knew Matthew RS, and eventually would return permanently to the House. Also, having the best of both worlds in the epilogue made for a nicer ending :-)
I get that but the place has clearly warped his mind. It's like he has Stockholm Syndrome. He's held hostage to the "beauty" of the place because he's been there so long.
It's actually really fascinating reading the takes on the ending and how people seem to be happy for him. I guess I'm in the minority here, but to me that world was a whole crime scene and a psychological torture chamber.
I think the ending was the 'best' possible outcome for Piranesi.
In a pragmatic sense, Piranesi had no choice but to rejoin the real world, or at least visit it regularly. He would not have survived in the Halls without material support (meagre though it was) from the Other. It would not have been fair to make 16 fetch him equipment for the rest of his life.
Piranesi did seem content with his life of subsistence, exploration, and learning. Like growing up, the loss of innocence is sad, but for the best.
Piranesi / Matthew turns out to be a genuinely good person in the end, in his interactions with James Ritter.
I really liked the choice that Piranesi had made at the end. I really like that that he had realized that he was going to be alone in the House, even with 16 visiting, had made him feel like that he needed to go to his original world. And the fact that 16 had taught him how to go back, gave him a way to get back to the House if he wanted. And the fact that he went to Ritter, and offered to bring him to the House, whenever was really sweet.
What other worlds do people think existed behind the other doors that aren't described?
My initial thought would there would be some sort of "Door of the Dead" where you could visit the souls of the dead. But I found it really interesting that they never actually talk about the other doors, or what useful things could be behind them, especially considering the coveted door is the one of Forgotten Knowledge.
Although maybe the side effects of the Other Worlds are related to their use. If the World of Forgotten Knowledge makes you forget things, would the Other World of Death rapidly kill you?
More worlds from mythology, maybe? Tower of Babel, Valhalla, Shangri-La, Camelot, Atlantis, etc?
What do you think about the characters?
Prophet = genuinely evil asshole. Other = genuinely evil asshole. 16 = brave, selfless, awesome. Piranesi = the best.
I love how even after Piranesi figured out the Other had been lying to him all those years, was the one responsible for him being trapped in the Labyrinth, and even after the Other tried to kill him and 16 at the end, he still tried to save the Other during the flood. Sure, he had a few days where he was totally consumed by rage towards the Other once he figured it all out, which is totally understandable... but ultimately, when it came down to the final moments, he still did the "right" thing by trying to save him. That, along with how he treated the remains of all the other people who had died in the Labyrinth, showed how truly good, kind, and compassionate he was.
It makes me wonder if he was always like that, or if that only came about due to his time spent in the Labyrinth.
I felt that Piranesi was the only character that had any complexity, which might have been the point. Everyone else was just completely one-track without any information about their motivations. It makes it almost like a children's book, but I guess that's a reflection of Piranesi's mental state, which is basically an adult with the curiosity of a child. However, without more character development, it also made the climax a little hollow for me. Piranesi is telling me that he cares whether the Other dies, but I don't really care since he's just a caricature of a jerk to me. Then despite bits of Matthew peeking out here and there in the middle of the book, at the end it seems like he's just as gone as the beginning.
Other - Neutral Evil
Prophet - Chaotic Evil
Raphael - Lawful Good
edit: Well, that turned out to be kind of a negative comment. I guess I just feel like complaining, and it's easier to talk about negative things than positive things. Otherwise, I enjoyed the the concept and the journey.
I think that Piranesi and 16 are the only redeeming characters in the book, while the Prophet and the Other are genuinely evil, in similar ways.
The Prophet had found out about Piranesi and did not help him out right, just pointed 16 in the right direction on how to find Piranesi. And while the Other knew about the memory lost, same with the Prophet (but at least he told Piranesi about the long term effects that the Labyrinth has on people, which gave Piranesi the require hints about the Other), but really just not care about Piranesi at all, just viewed him as a slave that was to be used.
I loved Piranesi and 16, disliked The Prophet, and absolutely despised The Other.
Piranesi reminds me of a child wrapped in an adult's body. The way he views the House and the world around him is innocent, like a child's view of the world. Everything is new, even the hundreds of statues are all unique and he gives them stories of their own.
Throughout the book, while The Other was describing 16 I had it in my mind that they were another student/follower of The Prophet. I was happy surprised that she wasn't and it made her character even better. The trust she put in Piranesi to help her get out of the House and her willingness to do whatever it took to bring James Ritter back to his family really endeared her character to me.
I don't have much to say about The Other or The Prophet that other people haven't already written. The gaslighting and lies from The Other made him a character that was easy to hate. The Prophet was a fanatic and used other's to get what he wanted, but in the end slightly redeemed himself by helping Piranesi.
I would argue that the Prophet didn't even slightly redeem himself, and in fact cements him as a entirely selfish person, as what he did wasn't to help Piranesi. Helping would have just been leading Piranesi out of the House. Piranesi being saved by 16 is just a side effect of the Prophet harming the Other.
From Prophet:
I guess my feeling is that he did let Piranesi know that 16 was coming and was looking for him. Sure he could have given Piranesi more information, but he didn't even have to tell him that 16 wasn't someone that Piranesi shouldn't be afraid of.
What are your thoughts and reactions regarding the house and the statues?
Regarding the House, I found it was such a great choice to have Piranesi label the rooms in such a systematic fashion that initially leaves the reader the impression that the House is well laid out. If he can remember how to get everywhere, and the Halls are labelled so easily (E.g. Sixth North-Western Hall), how complicated can it be? Then we see the outsiders referring to it as the Labyrinth, and then when we see some actual directions between locations, it's not as simple as "go through Second hall to Third hall, then to Fourth Hall," and instead it's more of each Hall having multiple doors leading to multiple different places. Piranesi has just become so in tune with the House at this point where we forget about getting lost is even a possibility.
The statues reminded me of myths and temples, but also of Narnia. I kept waiting for the white witch to appear or for some Narnia direct reference which never happened.
I think the statues are the The Great and Secret Knowledge. The Other spent so much time looking for it, when the answer was all around him the whole time, and he didn't even care about them. Each statue in the House represents a different person in the real world. In the last section, he is able to match people he sees in the real world with the various statues from the House, and he can see their true self. The House can even send messages via the Statues with the birds' help. I really enjoyed seeing the bird's prophecy come to fruition. "A message from afar. Obscure Writing. Innocence eroded." He finds the letter in the first Vestibule, he finds the scraps of paper from his Journal, and then he has a discussion with the Other about how the Other would kill Piranesi if Piranesi goes mad.
In a strange way, the book is a real-world stand-in for the World of the House it describes insofar as that world is only known to a few people, and those few have difficulty describing it to others.
I've felt the same way about describing the book to others: I want to invite others to read it but do not want to tell them anything about it and ruin much of the joy of the book. The book was transporting, but I can't describe the place it transported me to and, even though others can access that world as easily as I could, my inability to describe it will probably mean that they don't read the book and thereby experience the world it describes.
My kids introduced me to "the backrooms" internet mythology a while back. The premise is essentially that it's possible to "clip" outside the bounds of reality, and when you do so you end up in an endless maze of empty hallways resembling an office building with yellow walls and carpet and buzzing fluorescent lights on the ceiling. There are different levels you can ascend or descend to once there, including endless pool rooms, hotel-themed hallways, parking garages--all places that exist in the real world but seemingly infinite, eerily empty, and configured or laid out in puzzling or nonsensical ways. Piranesi made me think of that, and it was hard not to let my knowledge of the backrooms lore color my perception of the novel's setting. For a long time (before what was actually going on started to get fleshed out more) I was pretty much thinking this dude no-clipped into some weird Greco-Roman themed level of the backrooms.
You should check out MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod if you haven't already. I suspect your kid might dig it too if they're into liminal space concepts like the backrooms. :)
How did you respond to the narrator's limited perspective? What are your thought about this authorial technique?
I enjoyed the limited perspective and the mystery around essentially knowing only what Piranesi knows for the most part.
It's also a great perspective because while Piranesi looks at the world with such awe and joy, he's also fundamentally a smart person. So you don't feel like he's missing out while he tries to use logic to piece together things that don't quite make sense.
As we get further into the book, we do start to understand more than Piranesi and I was practically begging him not to trust The Other, but it wasn't in a frustrating way. It's more in a way that you want Piranesi to figure out that he's being controlled and treated essentially as a research prisoner for The Other.
Me too! Especially once the tension ramped up after the Prophet showed up, 16 started looking for him, and then the Other brought a gun and the idea of murder into the mix.
This is one of the first books in a very long time where I was so totally engrossed in it that I genuinely felt like Bastian in The NeverEnding Story, fully talking out loud to myself while reading it.. and pleading with the characters, secretly hoping they would hear me. :P