Use of voice in Piranesi

Piranesi is a 2020 novel by Susanna Clarke. Narrated by the title character through his journal entries, it describes Piranesi’s life in the House, a strange marble structure of twisting corridors and imposing statues. the House floods periodically, during which Piranesi retreats to the upper levels, having developed an ability to track and predict the tides. Throughout the novel, the narrator learns many things about the nature of the House and himself, treading a parallel path to the reader.

This essay is intended as a writer’s companion to our Roundtable episode in which we explore the novel’s themes and strengths. Both the podcast and this essay are intended to be listened to and read after reading Piranesi itself.

Piranesi is primarily a novel about narration. From the first pages, it’s clear there is just as much – if not more – clues to the mystery in the way Piranesi recounts things as in what he recounts. The voice is also key on an aesthetic and emotional level, with Piranesi’s open curiosity and generous, trusting instincts generating empathy within the reader. They encourage us to view him as a (very articulate and capable) child, without requiring any clunky or obvious exposition about his nature. We are left asking ‘what is he?’ not with confusion, but a burning curiosity reminiscent of Piranesi himself.

Clarke uses simple prose reminiscent of a younger, more naive narrator, but combines it with insights typical of someone who understands both the world and the people within it. This results in the reader questioning the nature of Piranesi’s consciousness; how did he arrive at his current state? Very early on we are questioning his assertions that the House is the whole world, and that this is how things have always been.

More specific textual hints (that Piranesi doesn’t notice) foreshadow the reveal later in the novel, that there are journal entries Piranesi forgot he wrote. He calls the Other’s jacket tweed, despite much of his language up until that point suggesting a complete lack of connection to the our ‘real world’. He also references a specific London street, again without noticing the direct connection to a world outside the House and the Tides.

Piranesi is an unreliable narrator, but he is an unwittingly transparent one; while he often misinterprets the world, Clarke makes these misunderstandings clear. This is most notable early in the novel in Piranesi’s description of the Other as his ‘only friend’ (due to them supposedly being the only two living people in the whole world). When Piranesi meets the Other for the first time in the text, we immediately realise the Other has no affection whatsoever for Piranesi. In addition, his language and behaviour indicate Piranesi’s belief about them being the world’s sole living souls is misplaced. The central joy of the novel is when Piranesi tells us one thing, but then we find something much stranger and more meaningful.

This further deepens the mystery by making us not only care about what? and why?, but who Piranesi has become, as a result of whatever led him to the House. The fact that we can guess a lot of the mystery before him – and that at its heart, the mystery is neither particularly complex nor revolutionary – does not detract from our investment in the way in which he describes and interacts with things.

At one point in the novel, he meets the Professor, who describes the relationship of the House with the ‘real world’, speculating upon its origin and reason for existing. Piranesi, despite being naive in many ways and failing to grasp the implications of the Professor’s ideas, constructs a hypothesis the Professor had not yet considered: