In 2004, a massive tome hit bookstores across Western Europe and North America. Weighing in at 900+ pages, and complete with 200 long and exhaustively-detailed footnotes, some readers might have understandably wondered how the book had wandered out of a university seminar and into the popular fiction section of their local Chapters or Barnes and Noble. And everyone was surprised when the massive book with tiny print—Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell—turned into a popular hit well-received by the critics, repeatedly praising it as “Harry Potter for adults,” and comparing the quality of the prose to master English stylist Jane Austen. And that surprise extended to the book’s writer—first-time novelist Susanna Clarke—who had expected the novel to have some small niche appeal. Instead, she got long-listed for the Booker Award, picked up a 2005 Hugo Award, and went on an international reading tour across Europe and North America. In 2006, publishers—no doubt sensing a public hungry for more—published a number of short stories by Clarke in a beautiful edition entitled The Ladies of Grace Adieu. Clarke’s stories are set against a carefully researched and observed Regency period (the period in British history when Prince George IV took over for the mentally incapacitated King George III: 1795-1820) and include both powerful magicians and Emperor Napoleon.
Clarke’s novel was about magic and the English fairies, something she has since joked she never should have done. In the English fairy tradition, the fairies are never to be spoken of; rather than the small, dainty, cute creatures of Disney, the fairies of English lore are more to the stuff of nightmares. They are the types of creatures who tempt you into alternate realities or trap you in endless sleep.
Clarke makes the joke because, after her stunning debut, it seemed to many that she simply disappeared, vanishing into thin air like a magician leaving the stage after dazzling her audience. Many readers, including this writer, have been waiting hungrily for years for new work from the little-known writer who rarely, if ever, granted interviews. That is, until the bizarre spring of 2020, when we began to hear, finally, rumors that Clarke was about to publish a new novel, entitled Piranesi. And then, late this summer, a sudden flurry of press revealed that Clarke had been suffering, for nearly 15 years, from a mysterious ailment that has yet to be decisively diagnosed (some articles name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and this poorly understood malady does seem to be the best bet) . Particularly good was this in-depth profile from The New Yorker that included both interviews and in-depth research. It’s worth a read, both for the fascinating story that Clarke has to tell and for the quality of the article’s prose.
Reviews of the new novel have been glowing. The Guardian loved it, as did NPR. Even the tech-geek magazine Wired had nothing but praise. At a little over 200 pages, the novel is far more digestible, especially for ESL learners, than her debut novel. The prose is spare, elegant, and clear; the clarity and concision takes that prose close to the level of poetry at times. The story it has to tell is part fantasy, part horror, and part mystery, and completely haunting. If you can’t tell, I loved the novel, acquiring my copy even as it came out of the publisher’s box at my local English bookstore in Montréal’s Mile End. I finished it a few days ago, feeling—much like the book’s narrator—subtly changed by the novel. The novel is almost impossible to describe; and any description would almost invariably come with the worst sort of .
I will say this much: Piranesi is the novel of the 2020 confinement. The novel’s themes of isolation and mental dislocation play out against sublime descriptions of an endlessly agitated sea and elegant meditations on the nature of art itself. The novel pleased me greatly on a number of levels.
Piranesi names our collective, planetary solitude with a strange .
by Nathan R. Elliott
- “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: Hogwarts for Grownups.” The New York Times, Sept 5, 2004. Intermediate. 8 mins.
- “Susanna Clarke’s Fantasy World of Interiors.” The New Yorker, September 7, 2020. Advanced. 20 mins.
- “Piranesi by Suassan Clarke Review — an elegant study in solitude..” The Guardian, September 17, 2020. Intermediate. 8 mins.
- “Susanna Clarke Divines Magic In Long-Awaited Novel 'Piranesi'” NPR, Sept 20, 2020. Intermediate.
8mins. - “The Madness of Susanna Clarke, Fairy Princess.”Wired, Sept 21, 2020. Advanced. 8 mins.