The Women’s prize-winning novel from the Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell author deposits listeners into “the House”, a mysterious building where the sea laps through the lower floors, clouds gather in the upper halls and birds swoop along corridors lined with statues. It is here that our eponymous narrator lives seemingly contentedly, subsisting on fish, warming himself by small pyres of dried seaweed and embarking on expeditions around the vast labyrinth of stairs, vestibules and hallways, often at the behest of a short-tempered visitor known as the Other.
Chiwetel Ejiofor reads this intense and enigmatic tale, which is presented in diary form, although time is an abstract concept – the opening entry is labelled: “The first day of the fifth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls.” Ejiofor expertly conveys Piranesi’s wonder at his environs, as well as the innocence and gratitude with which he accepts gifts – a pair of shoes, a sleeping bag, a packet of multivitamins – from his only companion, never stopping to wonder why he is wearing rags while the Other is dressed in an expensive suit. Just as unsettling is his lack of curiosity about his own past – the name Piranesi was given to him since he couldn’t recall his own or where he spent his childhood. Clarke conjures an elaborate world that is both beautiful and frightening, and feels compellingly real. Her economical prose and measured pacing enables Ejiofor’s narration to take flight. We keenly feel Piranesi’s growing anxiety as he faces the possibility that the world is not what he thought it was.
Piranesi is available on Bloomsbury audio, 6hr 58min.
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James Rebanks, Audible Studios, 7hr 25min
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