mutterwingwhirr (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mutterwingwhirr) wrote2023-05-22 02:58 am
mutterwingwhirr) wrote2023-05-22 02:58 am
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piranesi - 100% review
i think i'm sad about how this book ended. but let me retrace the story to see if that's true.
picking up where we left off, matthew rose sorenson's journal entry outlines a meeting with ketterley in the other world. of talking, of interviewing the man, and then of being induced to perform the ritual to enter the house. this ritual is never described in full. and we are finally given the final piece of the puzzle: how matthew rose sorenson came to be in the house. and we are devastated at the revelation. piranesi even pauses to remark on how much grief it would have caused him to have written the journal entry of his imprisonment, to have wanted to tear it to pieces. it is only just to pause here and consider what it must feel like, wanting to investigate a topic for a book you'd like to write, and to find yourself at the mercy at an entirely different world, with different rules. to be forced to live in isolation and subsistence as the price of your curiosity.
piranesi comes to this revelation mildly distraught, but mostly intact. it is unfortunate that such a thing happened to matthew rose sorenson, but that person is not him. and this is devastating too, in its own way. but we press on. piranesi has command of the jaeger, for now, as it were. and piranesi has a flood to contend with.
the Other is making preparations too. though, i'm not entirely sure what he had hoped to accomplish by bringing an inflatable kayak and a gun to a world-shaking natural disaster. did he only come to kill? did he only come to die?
and 16. both 16 and the Other could come and go at their leisure. and it's maddening to me to know the ritual to find the corridors is so tangibly accessible that people can do it after being taught once, and yet, is only ever acknowledged as that, a ritual. the esoteric descriptions are compelling, but leave little resolved. are we just left to take arne-sayles at his word? that by returning to a child-like mind, we could come to the crossroads that take us to the labyrinth? i'm frustrated that his word is the only one that is consistently true, even as his indifference to the plot blunts any cause for him to truly explain himself. and yet... and yet.... this man was the center of a cult. surely he had to explain himself in some manner at some point, if only to lend credence to what magic he had revealed to be true in the world?
and then piranesi makes preparations to leave this world, after the flood. he finishes his tasks, he packs and dresses up in his finest decorations, and he leaves the House to go to the other world. and his hair is cut and he has a credit card and a smartphone and none of this phases him. he remembers, or matthew does, and he can go about living in this world and experiencing it as someone who's been to another one, for a time. a story not so different from moving away from your birth country and growing to be native to a different one, and coming back to find your brain still remembers the words, and the world is not so different to navigate on the other side of the ocean. it's... easy. it feels too easy.
and then the narrator finds the way to go back. and he does. and he brings others. and he does not stay, for now. and the House remains present in his mind, a bridge between where he was and where he is now, and the House still guides him in the same way as it always has. and the beauty of the House is immeasurable; its kindness, infinite.
what to do with a story like this, in full? i suppose if the story had been about matthew rose sorenson, the investigation would have continued. the ritual, explained. the world and worlds beyond, explored. and it would have been a very different story than the one that landed here. and i suppose if the story had been about the beloved child of the house, it would have stayed a story about the House and its endless mysteries. how do you tell the ending of a story about infinity?
i loved this book. i loved to contemplate the far off places the narrator was describing to me. i enjoyed hearing how much he loved to be there, to be one with the House and to entrust his needs to it. i loved the idea of this house being a place that real people could go to, with a little magic to get you there. i loved that the house was equally magnificent and dangerous. i truly appreciated how the format saved until the very end the answer to the question, "why is he in this place at all?" and i am glad that it's still a place he loves.
what a confusing book. i had come here intending to write about how this book felt disappointing, to talk about how the ending felt abrupt, ketterley's plotline too dismissed, the ritual/arne-sayles' story all but breezed over... and all of those things are still true to how i feel. but. the thing i've come away with more than anything is how much the narrator loves the House. and i do too. i'm glad to have spent time there. how terrible to have gotten caught up in the horrendous storyline of whatever arne-sayles was up to, what ketterley was up to in full, when all the narrator ever wanted to do was to live in the House forever. but knowing that you can always come back, and that it is not the only world you may occupy? that you have lived in another one and can live there again? i suppose it's only natural to come to the decision that you may as well have a go at living there. it doesn't change how you feel about the House to leave it. that's still the place you come from, no matter where you go.
i think i'll leave my rating where it was. 7/8. i truly wish there had been more about the other side, about other characters' intentions, about being informed by former splinters of self about the world you're navigating. but what was there was really, really good.
picking up where we left off, matthew rose sorenson's journal entry outlines a meeting with ketterley in the other world. of talking, of interviewing the man, and then of being induced to perform the ritual to enter the house. this ritual is never described in full. and we are finally given the final piece of the puzzle: how matthew rose sorenson came to be in the house. and we are devastated at the revelation. piranesi even pauses to remark on how much grief it would have caused him to have written the journal entry of his imprisonment, to have wanted to tear it to pieces. it is only just to pause here and consider what it must feel like, wanting to investigate a topic for a book you'd like to write, and to find yourself at the mercy at an entirely different world, with different rules. to be forced to live in isolation and subsistence as the price of your curiosity.
piranesi comes to this revelation mildly distraught, but mostly intact. it is unfortunate that such a thing happened to matthew rose sorenson, but that person is not him. and this is devastating too, in its own way. but we press on. piranesi has command of the jaeger, for now, as it were. and piranesi has a flood to contend with.
the Other is making preparations too. though, i'm not entirely sure what he had hoped to accomplish by bringing an inflatable kayak and a gun to a world-shaking natural disaster. did he only come to kill? did he only come to die?
and 16. both 16 and the Other could come and go at their leisure. and it's maddening to me to know the ritual to find the corridors is so tangibly accessible that people can do it after being taught once, and yet, is only ever acknowledged as that, a ritual. the esoteric descriptions are compelling, but leave little resolved. are we just left to take arne-sayles at his word? that by returning to a child-like mind, we could come to the crossroads that take us to the labyrinth? i'm frustrated that his word is the only one that is consistently true, even as his indifference to the plot blunts any cause for him to truly explain himself. and yet... and yet.... this man was the center of a cult. surely he had to explain himself in some manner at some point, if only to lend credence to what magic he had revealed to be true in the world?
and then piranesi makes preparations to leave this world, after the flood. he finishes his tasks, he packs and dresses up in his finest decorations, and he leaves the House to go to the other world. and his hair is cut and he has a credit card and a smartphone and none of this phases him. he remembers, or matthew does, and he can go about living in this world and experiencing it as someone who's been to another one, for a time. a story not so different from moving away from your birth country and growing to be native to a different one, and coming back to find your brain still remembers the words, and the world is not so different to navigate on the other side of the ocean. it's... easy. it feels too easy.
and then the narrator finds the way to go back. and he does. and he brings others. and he does not stay, for now. and the House remains present in his mind, a bridge between where he was and where he is now, and the House still guides him in the same way as it always has. and the beauty of the House is immeasurable; its kindness, infinite.
what to do with a story like this, in full? i suppose if the story had been about matthew rose sorenson, the investigation would have continued. the ritual, explained. the world and worlds beyond, explored. and it would have been a very different story than the one that landed here. and i suppose if the story had been about the beloved child of the house, it would have stayed a story about the House and its endless mysteries. how do you tell the ending of a story about infinity?
i loved this book. i loved to contemplate the far off places the narrator was describing to me. i enjoyed hearing how much he loved to be there, to be one with the House and to entrust his needs to it. i loved the idea of this house being a place that real people could go to, with a little magic to get you there. i loved that the house was equally magnificent and dangerous. i truly appreciated how the format saved until the very end the answer to the question, "why is he in this place at all?" and i am glad that it's still a place he loves.
what a confusing book. i had come here intending to write about how this book felt disappointing, to talk about how the ending felt abrupt, ketterley's plotline too dismissed, the ritual/arne-sayles' story all but breezed over... and all of those things are still true to how i feel. but. the thing i've come away with more than anything is how much the narrator loves the House. and i do too. i'm glad to have spent time there. how terrible to have gotten caught up in the horrendous storyline of whatever arne-sayles was up to, what ketterley was up to in full, when all the narrator ever wanted to do was to live in the House forever. but knowing that you can always come back, and that it is not the only world you may occupy? that you have lived in another one and can live there again? i suppose it's only natural to come to the decision that you may as well have a go at living there. it doesn't change how you feel about the House to leave it. that's still the place you come from, no matter where you go.
i think i'll leave my rating where it was. 7/8. i truly wish there had been more about the other side, about other characters' intentions, about being informed by former splinters of self about the world you're navigating. but what was there was really, really good.