Book Review: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I picked this up because I wanted something small. It kept showing up in recommendations, and honestly, the name and the cover were enough for me to just buy it.

The first 50–70 pages are strange. It’s hard to understand what’s happening or what this world even is. You’re dropped into an infinite house — endless rooms, endless corridors, walls lined with thousands of statues, each one different. Piranesi lives here, studying the rooms, talking to birds, exploring. He meets a character called the Other twice a week, shares his findings, and helps him. That’s about all you know for a while. But that’s how the novel is written — and somewhere around that 50–70 page mark, the pace picks up and things start to click. I wouldn’t want to say exactly what shifts, because that would be a spoiler, but it does shift.

One of the things that genuinely surprised me was how much the statues did for me as a reader. I’d never really thought about statues having meaning before this book. Clarke describes them in enough detail that you get a real picture in your head. The first one that stuck with me was the lady with the bees — that image landed immediately and stayed.

What really made me think, though, was the contrast between Piranesi and the Other. Piranesi is in complete awe of the House. He sees it as beautiful in itself — not a means to an end, just something worth loving and learning from. The Other wants knowledge that will make him powerful, something he can extract through ritual. It’s obvious who you root for. Piranesi, always.

Beyond the mystery, the book carries something deeper — hints of religious teaching, almost Buddhist in the way it plays out. There are always people who chase knowledge or power or even immortality through any means they can find. But Piranesi does what Vipassana teaches: he observes. And through observation, the ego dissolves. Knowledge is there, but it reveals itself to those who are actually paying attention, in the form of obvious revelations. I practice Vipassana myself, so this wasn’t just an interesting idea in the story — it genuinely connected to something personal. It felt like Piranesi was living out what the practice points toward.

The writing itself is easy and beautiful. No friction once you settle in.

The second half of the book has real momentum — some happy moments, a lot of shocking ones. At first I felt a little sad, just thinking about how strange it was that only one or two people existed in this enormous place. But the book earns what it builds toward.

Everyone who loves to read should read this. Just go in knowing the opening is deliberately disorienting — sit with it, and let it open up.