phantomtomato

Two books this past month, both starting with the letter ‘P.’

How was your June? Here, June marks the first full month of summer on campus: almost empty buildings, no meetings, no events. The bagpipers practice out on the quad in the afternoon. I spend the evenings thinking I can still hear the sound of pipes. I also traveled and hand a wonderful time visiting a great friend. ❤️

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
I associate Susanna Clarke with JSMN, which I haven’t read, but which a good friend dragged around for what felt like a year in middle school. It was probably a month, but time works differently when you’re twelve. JSMN is a brick, and I don’t read bricks—but when a friend indicated that Piranesi was more reasonably-sized, I decided to give it a read.


I liked it! Clarke earns all of her accolades: her writing is very good. This novel sits comfortably in literary fiction, which is important for me, because I don’t tend to connect well with genre fantasy novels. I was worried that this would be like that, actually, as the first part is really divorced from anything I tend to find compelling. The first-person narrator, Piranesi, opens by describing the strange House that he lives in, with many Rooms and Tides and animals but only one other person who occasionally visits. I’m not bothered by being confused or dropped straight into a plot, and that wasn’t my issue here. It was that the plot I was dropped into had all the trappings of fantasy worldbuilding, disconnected from our own. Each section of the novel is a journal entry with a date at the top, and the dates are using a fictional calendar system. I couldn’t bring myself to care, and I only pushed through that first 10% because I knew that a friend had liked it—which is not a great position to be in for the first 10% of a book!

I don’t think the novel would have been better if this section were cut or if it were shorter, even. It’s just a big ask of a reader like me, and I could see it being a bit jarring for someone who wanted the high fantasy setting which is then interrupted by the revelation that it’s all actually a minor news story from our world.

But I’m glad that I did keep reading, because part two reveals that Piranesi is actually a portal fantasy, and the portal to another world comes by way of an academic cult of personality in ours. That’s great! Very much my speed. Clarke does a fantastic job of sketching these characters mostly in absentia, with Piranesi piecing together notes from his earlier journals and the little information he has through his interactions with other people. It’s a great mystery, and I especially enjoyed learning about the academic research which led to this—the personalities were very recognizable Types of Academic.

I don’t love that Piranesi’s eventual ally was a cop. I think this struck me as especially difficult to process in a modern novel (published in 2020) and set in the modern era, in a way that perhaps it wouldn’t be otherwise. It makes logistical sense, given the plot, and the character isn’t so much of the novel that it ruins the experience of watching Piranesi, but… yeah. I suppose I just wish that it had been some other job.


Generally I would recommend Piranesi, and I expect that I will consider future works from Clarke, as long as they’re also more conventionally-sized.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
This is a book that I thought I would never read. Such is the power of friendship, I guess, that I’ve ended up here.


I came into P&P with biases and I will never deny that those influenced me. With that disclaimer, I think this was so much more boring than Persuasion, which I loved reading even if I wasn’t totally compelled by the main romance. Where Persuasion had an interesting extended cast with compelling B-plots, P&P has a bunch of truly awful people who should not be raising children (the Bennets, Lady Catherine), a sanctimonious ass (Mr. Collins), and a whole host of mostly forgettable faces in the friend group (the Bennet sisters, Mr Bingley, Charlotte, Caroline, Georgiana).

Lizzy/Darcy is fine. I appreciated that we got to see them talk and interact, which is much more than I can say for Anne/Wentworth! Lizzy’s unfortunately a prototypical example of believing herself Not Like Other Girls, though this is quickly explained by the behavior of her parents, who should not have had any children, let alone five of them. Darcy is Fine, in the mostly-boring way, and his character only compels me in proximity to Wickham, who is fantastic.

Really, all of this aside, the hardest part of the novel for me was reading about how absolutely terribly everyone treats Lydia. Yes, Lydia makes a bucketload of bad decisions, and is herself annoying, but god, the way that her family immediately turns on her! And the way her father discussed her before that! And that her only defender is her equally-terrible mother whose defense is just, “well, now I get to be the mother of a married woman, which gives me status!” Though I will also put up there Mr. Bennet’s incredible, offensive engagement congratulations speech to Jane. Somebody please shut him up.

I don’t think I’m connecting very well with Austen’s style of social commentary. She writes beautifully. But there’s something about the characters she’s villainizing that makes me feel mainly annoyed or disinterested, I suppose? And at worst, like they are being treated hypocritically when compared to her heroines. I don’t know. I plan to read more and think on it.

In this novel I was most taken with the bits where Wickham discusses Pemberley and the Darcys—to be sure, he tries to manipulate the listener whenever on this subject, but there is also such a depth of feeling that I am intrigued and want to hear more. His respect for the old Mr. Darcy is absolute, and though it may be mostly money, there is much less pleasure in taking money from a man who detests or only tolerates you. And on the younger Mr. Darcy, Wickham is so miserably mean that it suggests an emotional schism as well as a financial one. (Yes, I definitely ship Darcy/Wickham.)


My primary reaction to finishing this is to think, well, I’ve done it! It feels like one of those life milestones, like living alone for the first time, or perhaps buying a vehicle. I have read Pride and Prejudice. I think it will be useful to have done so, so I’m glad that I did.