Piranesi labyrinth series#

Sorenson reflects on the time he spent enslaved in the labyrinth and it’s too much to bear. The second transformation occurs when Sorenson finally regains his memory with the help of his diary entries and police officer Sarah Raphael’s secret messages. He transforms from Matthew Rose Sorenson onto Piranesi, a child of the House.

Over the course of six years, he falls to amnesia, a side effect of dwelling in the labyrinth long-term. Valentine Andrew Ketterley uses Sorenson in a ritual to open a portal to the labyrinth, which he enslaves Sorenson inside. Sorenson experiences a traumatic event which transforms him into two different people. The idea of transformation from trauma is the main theme in the novel. The story introduces many interesting and unnerving topics such as the concept of the local versus the universal, alternate dimensions and portals, and the practice of divination and occultism.Īs a reader, I was fascinated with the idea of trauma and how it can transform oneself into a completely different person. The skeletons represent the deceased and the statues represent the concept of people and the influx of knowledge flowing into the House. I admire the way Clarke uses the House as an analogy for our world. Susanna Clarke’s novel, Piranesi, examines the magical yet ominous world of Piranesi, also known as Matthew Rose Sorenson, a man in his early thirties who is enslaved for nearly six years in an alternate dimension known as the labyrinth, or to Piranesi, the House and the World. Through a prose that reads like deep introspection, alight with a musical cadence and a dreamy tone, Clarke also asks, “Who and what can we trust when our world is changing so much outside our control?” This conflict of truth and change versus normalcy is one so relatable to a fluctuating world where nothing is certain and the normal must shift drastically, much like the world that we live in now. This novel has staying power in the heart and the psyche long after reading, because it reminds us that finding the truth and Knowledge is a complex experience that can cause both harm and good. You feel joy with Piranesi, worry, anger, and fear. These journals are a means of learning the home, the world Piranesi lives in as he does, leaving readers feeling the effect of his discoveries as if we and he are uncovering the truth in unison. This novel grips you from the start in a gentle hold, each chapter a journal entry from our brave yet soft Piranesi. To find out that, on the way to this Great and Secret Knowledge, that there are things that not only have yet to be named but have the power to change everything Piranesi knows as well is written in a way that strikes an empathetic chord in the reader. There are aspects of the labyrinth Piranesi calls home that are capitalized as if named, a community Piranesi has built for himself in this seemingly mutable house. We follow Piranesi and his only human companion, the Other, as they seek out A Great and Secret Knowledge that pushes Piranesi to realize his home is not as knowable and patterned as he first believed. Piranesi is a tale that asks those who read it, “What do we do with the truth when it troubles all that we know?” as Susanna Clarke illustrates how blissful ignorance does not and cannot last forever through our point of view character, Piranesi. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.” There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But Piranesi is not afraid he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. Quick Book Summary (from the official blurb): “Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, is our next selection.

Piranesi labyrinth series#

In a continuation of our series of micro-reviews, assistant editor Brandon Williams brought together a group of ardent readers to give their quick-hit impressions of recent novels which have won major awards from the literary world.