mtvessel | The Biscuit Box Man

Jun 2021
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke – Bloomsbury, 2020
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I haven't checked, but I suspect that a lot of people will have been disappointed by this book. It is Clarke's first novel since the generally splendid but somewhat flawed Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which came out fifteen years earlier. After such a long gap, readers may have been hoping for a similarly lavish and expansive world with a rich cast of characters. If so, they will be disappointed. This book is short - less than 250 pages - and its story is closer to that of a typical computer game, with a lone protagonist who only occasionally interacts with others. But also like many good computer games, it has striking and memorable visuals.

The book consists of a set of diary entries written by a man with a distinctive formal style reminiscent of the eighteenth century (many capitalised nouns, some unnecessarily). The writing fits the location he is describing - a vast labyrinth of chambers containing grand marble staircases and statues such as the Woman Carrying a Beehive, or the Angel Caught on a Rose Bush. The lower halls are regularly flooded by tides and the upper ones are covered in cloudy mists and sometimes invaded by birds. Piranesi, as the man calls himself, lives a hermit-like existence, subsisting on shellfish and seaweed. He considers himself a scientist, and every Tuesday he meets with the only living person that he knows, a man in his 50s whom he calls The Other, to assist him in his search for the Great and Secret Knowledge that he believes is hidden somewhere in the world. At other times he tends to the bones of the thirteen other people that he has discovered. One of them he calls "the Biscuit Box Man" because the smaller bones have been placed in a red biscuit box with the legend "Huntley Palmers and Family Circle".

That last detail is typical of the strangeness and precision that define this book, both in the language and in the way that the world is described through Piranesi's scientific personality. But Piranesi also has a child-like sense of wonder and innocence that makes him very engaging. The reader quickly senses that the Other is probably not a nice person, which makes Piranesi's naivety a good source of dramatic tension.

I don't know if there is any deeper symbolic meaning to the setting, and it's a shame that Clarke still struggles a little when trying to explain Piranesi and his situation, relying on a similarly clunky expository method to the footnotes in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I do wish she wrote more, as I am sure that with practice she could find more elegant ways of advancing the plot. But it is nonetheless a pleasure to engage with an author who chooses her words so carefully and creates such powerful visual images with them.