Piranesi

Format read: paperback (borrowed from a friend)
Reading time: 7+ hours
Tags: fantasy, magical realism, psychological, mystery, magic realism
Own a copy: no
Reread likelihood: 0/10 (not because I didn't like it, but because I don't think I'd ever need to reread it to ‘get it')

Summary
In a maze-like house filled with statues and the ebb and flow of tides lives Piranesi, a self-declared scientist who takes great pains in exploring the infinite labyrinth and writing about his discoveries. Piranesi shares his peaceful existence with another human, the Other, with whom he has weekly philosophical and scientific discussions. When Piranesi starts to read his old journals, he realizes that not all is at it seems in the house of many wonders.


Roman Ruins by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778)

Review
[The review will contain spoilers as it is entirely impossible to avoid them with this type of narrative. Proceed at your own risk.]

Where to start with this book? There are so many categories for this book that it can be difficult to classify it. At first, it was very scifi to me, but then the low fantasy and soft magic elements kicked in, and then a psychological/murder mystery topped it all off. Our MC Piranesi spends the entire book clueless about the fact that he is a prisoner of this universe and that, ironically, the exit to the real world is most of the time only a few meters away from him. There were quite a lot of plot holes and loose ends in this tale. For example, why does Piranesi know what crips are, or what type of suits and patterns the Other is wearing, but he doesn't know what "police" means. These choices and gaps in his knowledge seem arbitrary as there's no definite pattern to his way of thinking or seeing the world.The system for dates and for different sections of the maze that he creates for himself makes sense and is structured, but many details about his knowledge make no sense. Why does he recognize the different types of birds that live in the house, but he doesn't know what the constellations are called? Why does he know the conventional days of the week such as Monday and Tuesday, but he doesn't know the names of months and has to rely instead on a system ("the 24th day of the second month of the year when the albatross came," for example)? Piranesi's selective amnesia seems to have no rhyme or reason to it, which makes the story hard to follow and breaks the immersion. The Other is also weirdly constructed. His search for the Knowledge with Piranesi seems to make sense at first, but then he abandons this cause entirely and becomes hyper-focused on the new visitor, 16. If his purpose in kidnapping and imprisoning Piranesi was for them to work out the secrets of the maze, then he has failed spectacularly at his one job. Also, what is the point in keeping Piranesi in this place other than to be comically evil? This whole plot point seems pointless since Piranesi doesn't contribute to this pursuit at all. Instead, Piranesi focuses on measuring the tides, cataloguing statues, and writing in his journal. All of these things, although important within the world of the House, are irrelevant to the Other's mission, so why keep Piranesi around, then? Why even kidnap Piranesi to begin with? He didn't need to stick someone into the House since he is able to visit it any time he wants. Granted, he can't stay too long in the House or else he'll start to forget things, but he still could have done his research without Piranesi (especially since Piranesi is pretty useless to his cause).Laurence, the arch-villain, appears in the novel for a couple of pages, and then is never seen again. What happened to him out in the real world? Was he not arrested for his part in the various crimes and Piranesi's kidnapping? Does he continue to exert his influence on unsuspecting university students? We don't know because there's never any follow up to his arc as a character and villain mastermind."My first great insight happened when I realised how much humankind had lost. Once, men and women were able to turn themselves into eagles and fly immense distances. They communed with rivers and mountains and received wisdom from them. They felt the turning of the stars inside their own minds. My contemporaries did not understand this. They were enamoured with the idea of progress and believed that whatever was new must be superior to what was old."-Laurence, in PiranesiThe House functions as a character itself, but its existence is never explained in a satisfactory way. The magic that sustains this place isn't explained beyond the vague "find a place from before reason appeared," and its rules are also not explained. For example, when someone visits this place, what happens to their physical body? It seems as though the person is transported completely, but there's one exception: Jimmy Ritter. He is found living behind a wall in Laurence's home, covered in his own urine and faeces, yet he was also 'living' in the House (as evidenced by the crisp packets left behind in the House and found by Piranesi). Why is he the only one who is not bodily transported (unless he is, and it's just not mentioned for some reason)?Then, if there is a passageway between this (our) world and the House, how come people don't just randomly stumble upon it? Who are all the dead in the House; random visitors, or Laurence's victims? How do people such as 16, who has never been to the House, navigate the maze and somehow always manage to find Piranesi? The same is true for Laurence who very easily finds Piranesi despite the fact that there are hundreds of halls and vestibules, staircases, floors, etc.Finally, the best question to describe the ending is 'why?' Why did we go through this journey alongside Piranesi only to have him become this strange 3rd version of himself; neither Matthew nor Piranesi, yet still connected to the House despite it all? It seems as though the novel, and the House in particular, is just one long, extended metaphor about mental illness and/or the inability to live in reality. The House offers an escape for all these characters who seek to better humanity by finding some kind of obscure, long-lost form of knowledge. However, the 'lesson' here is that eventually you have to go back and live in the real world. If the message of this novel was to promote the whimsy of the House (and therefore the unconscious mind), then it did not do its job very well. The reality is that the House is a horrific place filled with solitude, death, and constant danger. The real world is a much better place to be in.