Piranesi

If you want to read a book about an idiot wandering aimlessly around a giant, mostly empty, statue museum then boy do I have a recommendation for you!

Ok so idiot is unfair. Piranesi's childlike naivety is at once endearing and frustrating. But what is this book? It feels like a concept piece, as in abstract and metaphorical and not fleshed out at all. That's the problem with allegories. They're all too often paper thin.

Let's assume the House is a metaphor (if it's not, then it really is just a book about an idiot trapped in a house). Once you get that, or begin to suspect it, what else does the book offer? Really, nothing. Nothing much else happens. Piranesi eats some seaweed. Pieces together at last the idea that Other is abusive. Uses the word Vestibule twelve million times. Gets rescued. The end.

And even now, I'm not sure it really is an allegory because, and I cannot stress this enough, nothing happens. There's a whiff of an idea that it could be about exiting an abusive relationship, and the half-broken, half-free way you might continue to exist after that. But the House is benevolent and actually somewhat yearned-for by the people who've visited it. So I think it's a metaphor for a life-changing enlightenment from which you can't return to normality, such as a religious or philosophical awakening that at the same time traps you within its world view and whisks you away from reality.

But it's only a hint! Only a possible interpretation, if you squint. Maybe it's just about a guy trapped in a House.

edit: Oh, wow, I've just read a review that suggests the House is a metaphor for drumroll the worlds you enter when you read books. So. It's worse than I thought.


I've given worse books 2 stars, I didn't hate it like some of them, it just passed through me without leaving much impression.

Other reviews have praised the ‘world building'. What world building? It's just endless halls full of statues. The occasional bird. What have I missed? Was there a chapter I skipped where something other than birds, water, and marble existed in the world?