A mystery: why did I cry at the end of Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi? I suppose it was the poignant impression of a person longing for a world in which they had lost one identity and acquired another one, a world of vast halls and vestibules furnished with statues representing ideas in the ‘real’ world, an other world no less real than that world. It is lonely, austere, and hazardous, but brims with wonder. “The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.” I think I understand their longing: when reading a beautifully constructed piece of writing, I am calm at last. Even the terrible sorrows that haunt people are given thoughtful space and elegant form, providing shelter in the midst of awesome tides that threaten to sweep you away. That other world is simpler: there is only the weather, and the birds that speak to you, and the bones that require offerings of food and water and water lilies.





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