Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke

I've never read such a peaceful book.

I'm not saying it's not a page-turner--it is. The reviews said readers could finish it in a day, and that held true for me. It was after my workout last Thursday morning, and I thought I would read a few sentences before I started all the work I was supposed to be doing, so I sat halfway up the steps (because I didn't want to get any of the furniture sweaty) and opened the book on my phone. Two and a half hours later, I wondered if I was bruising my tailbone on the stairs, and I told myself I really should be getting along now, but then I was almost done--glued in until the end. But even though the mystery is enticing and the pace of the reveals keeps you flipping (or in my case swiping), the book as a whole radiates deep contentment and joy.

Reading is fun for me largely because I get to experience the mind of the narrator of the book. Like an Airbnb for your brain--come in, see the furniture, peek through the kitchen cupboards, feel the firmness of the mattress. Some of them are a little piecemeal, some are nice but unmemorable, some are deeply sad (books, not Airbnbs I hope), and some are fresh and original and cohesive and the minute you open the door the whole place lets you sink into it, and you can really let go and relax. It's a week since I read Piranesi, and I can still think back and remember the feeling of being in the story, of having a purer heart than I actually do, of the tranquility that comes when you know you're cared for.

The narrator of Piranesi is a character who never names himself, and he keeps himself separate from the names that other characters give him. "Piranesi" is what he's called by his fellow house-dweller but he decidedly claims that is not his name. Later on we learn about the name he was born with, but at the end of the book it's made very clear that the narrator is not either of these identities--he has seemed to absorb but also transcend both of them, as if Clarke is making a statement on who a person really is, that we're more than a sum of our experiences, that we have some larger self that can't be reduced to different parts of our pasts.

But as the reader we don't really mind what his name is or isn't--it's simply him who is so compelling.

Piranesi first struck me at the beginning of the book by his patient, devoted interest in the world around him. He made charts of the tides that fill the lower halls of the ethereal house in which he lives. He takes the time to twist seaweed around his glasses, testing out different fish oils as glue. He has catalogued the different remains of dead bodies that he has stumbled upon and visits them with tenderness and reverence.

If we were to take the objective facts of his daily life, they would come pretty near prison and torture: nearly alone except for twice weekly visits with another human; eating only fish and seaweed, sometimes not eating for days at a time because food is scarce; enduring cold winters; feeling the fear of the unpredictable tides that might sweep him away before he marks out their patterns.

And that's the beauty of books as a whole (and film for that matter)--that I don't have to experience these circumstances as myself. I get to approach them with the eager curiosity of Piranesi, as he travels through room after room in the house writing notes about their arrangement and contents. 

That's one of the real joys and fears of writing--an author can only put on the page what they have inside of themselves. No matter how many outside sources we might channel or how expertly we craft our plots, the ultimate filter that curates the reader's primary experience of the book is the voice of the book. For most of us, our stories give away too many of the things we try to hide from polite company: our selfishness, our pettiness, our obsessive need to explain--the general smallness of our hearts. And even though there have been debates about whether a books voice is always revealing the author herself or whether it shows something completely separate, conjured purely from imagination, I say a person's imagination (what they are capable of imagining) says something significant about who that person is.

Susanna Clarke may not be a saint. W. H. Auden: "Pray for me and for all writers, living or dead: because there are many whose works are in better taste than their lives." But I have deep admiration for the person who had the capacity to write the voice of Piranesi, and being in his mind is a vacation to remember.

"The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite."