My New Friend, "PIRANESI" by Susanna Clarke

 

Me and my new friend, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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Hi. My name is Bobby Keniston, and my only friends are books. So, for example, if I were in a mysterious, magical house where I only ever talked to statues and birds, so long as I had books, I would probably be fine. 

Probably. 

Which brings me to my new friend, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. This was a long-awaited comeback novel for Clarke, since her very successful (and very big) Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell arrived in 2004. Piranesi, for most folks, was worth the wait. Much slimmer than her previous novel (Piranesi clocks in at 245 pages), but not less magical. For me, it created a different impact I wasn't expecting. 

ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

It is difficult to talk about Piranesi in heavy detail without giving too much away. It concerns our narrator, who tells us his story through journal entries marked in a calendar he created, who lives in a strange, magical house that is his entire world. To his knowledge, there is only one other living person in this universe who he calls "the Other". The Other calls him Piranesi, but our narrator is pretty sure this is not his name. 

This magical house is filled with statues, but it also has an Ocean and Tides, and Clouds and rain. Piranesi, as he is called, survives by fishing, gathering seaweed both for food and fuel, and spends his days wandering the almost infinite rooms and hallways, keeping notes. He meets with the Other twice a week, who he believes is a scientist, and who is working on cracking the code for the Great and Secret Knowledge. 

The house, like the book, is a labyrinth and a puzzle. The book engages the reader by slowly and precisely unravelling the mystery of the House, and of the man called Piranesi. 

TAKEAWAYS

Piranesi won the Women's Prize for Fiction, and I can understand why. It is brilliantly written, incredibly smart and creative, and Clarke is both a top notch storyteller and writer (which, yes, are two different things). 

I was told that the book was very enjoyable and magic and fun and that I should read it. And yes, I found it magical in many ways, and enjoyable in many places... 

But I think it hit me differently than it did many people. Stop reading here if you don't want to hear my emotional response to the ending. I will not spell out what happens, but I am going to be very specific about how it made me feel.  Okay? So stop reading if you worry this may spoil things for  you---

I ultimately found Piranesi to be a tragedy in a way. Not a full-blown tragedy. There is hope, I suppose, and there isn't a bit ol' body count or anything. But the ending made me incredibly sad. The message, for me, ultimately was about how sometimes people must completely disassociate to survive, completely lose themselves and their very identity, as well as their memories. That in specific, traumatic situations, you must almost start over with a blank slate if you are going to make it. In short, you get lost. And even if you're found, you are never completely the same. There is a part of you that is still lost, and will always be lost. 

And that made me sad. 

Still, it is a masterful book and you should read it if you get a chance. 

My New Friend, "KINDRED" by Octavia E. Butler

 

Me and my new friend "Kindred" by Octavia E. Butler. This is the 25th Anniversary Edition

Hi. My name is Bobby Keniston, and my only friends are books. And sometimes books have to tell you hard truths. Sometimes friends have to hold you accountable. Sometimes friends need to make you look at an issue with empathy, shock, and, yes, sometimes even guilt, to help you grow and change. 

I am talking about my new friend, Kindred the late, but certainly great Octavia E. Butler, who helped redefine what science fiction for a new era. Kindred may be her most celebrated standalone novel. Written in 1976, writer Walter Mosely said, "It is everything the literature of science fiction can be," while Harlan Ellison called the book, "That rare artifact... the novel one returns to, again and again, through the years, to learn, to be humbled, and to be renewed." 

I think my new friend is truly great. Let's talk about why. 

HOW I MET MY NEW FRIEND

I have been meaning to read some Octavia E. Butler for quite some time. And then a YouTube channel I enjoy watching called "Books and Things" had a video about a Historical Fiction Readathon for the months of May--- and here we are. One of the challenges in this readathon is to read a piece of historical fiction that has a speculative element, and the host, Katie Lumsden, recommended Kindred. That felt like a nice bit of encouragement to finally discover this brilliant author, and I am very glad I did. 

(If you want to watch the video about the #HistoricalFictionReadathon, you can do so by following THIS LINK)

I was happy that my local library, The Thompson Free Library, had a copy of my new friend Kindred. I am a little sad, though, that it looks like I'm the first person to ever take it out. 

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

Kindred tells the story about woman a black woman in the 1970s who, after moving into her new house with her white husband Kevin (I only mention their races because they are imperative plot points and thematic points in the book), inexplicably finds herself getting dizzy, losing, fading away from her new home and arriving in the antebellum south on a plantation in Maryland. Here, she finds her path intersected with Rufus Weylin, the son of the plantation owner, who, we learn early on, is an ancestor. She is clearly coming back to save his life time and again, protecting her very bloodline, though at the expense of becoming an enslaved person and confronting the violence of the time. Each time she is pulled back, the stakes are higher, and she loses not only more months and years of her life, but also is threatened with losing the very foundation of who she has always known herself to be. 

SOME THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

Kindred is simultaneously a difficult book to read because of its unflinching portrayal of the inhumane treatment that white Americans inflicted upon the people they enslaved, while also being a suspenseful page turner. That is a huge testament to Butler's remarkable skill as a storyteller. 

I also love that Butler doesn't waste time. She comes right out of the gate, hooks you, then continues to keep kicking it up a notch as the pages fly by. For example, her are the first two sentences of the book:

"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm."

If that doesn't grab a reader, then let's just say it is the fault of said reader and not the writer. 

You will notice based on these first two sentences that the story is told as a first-person narrative, another brilliant stroke by Butler. For this story in particular, a first-person narrative heightens the idea of empathy as we the reader see things through Dana's eyes, and hear her every thought. And Butler gives us a thoroughly complex, but relatable, and oh-so-strong narrator. Dana is brilliant, resourceful, and with compassion that I believe very few people could have in her circumstance. She is put through a great deal in this book, and we are put through it with her. It is impossible not to root for her (unless you are an awful person, but more on that later). 

Butler gives every character (with the exception of maybe one or two very minor ones) a complex humanity. This is what could be truly brilliant about the book, and the very thing that makes it as philosophically complex as it is flat-out entertaining: Butler recognizes that, like it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, dark, grotesque inhumanity is still part of being human. The enslavement of a race of people would not be possible if it wasn't. 

Try to let that sit with you for a moment. As much as we try to separate ourselves from the very idea of inhumanity by calling it inhumanity, it is simply not true, but just another way for humans to avoid accountability. These vicious deeds SHOULD NOT be part of the human experience. But, dammit, they are, and acknowledging it is the first step to maybe trying to actually do something about it. 

I also love Butler's depiction of the relationship between Dana and her husband Kevin. They are both writers, and, while they do have fights, their love is strong. When Kevin is sucked back in time with her (perhaps a mild spoiler, but it happens early on--- sorry), we really get to see how it affects their relationship and what they feel about one another. 

It is also worth noting that, since the novel takes place in the 1970s, Butler's present day is historical now, too. A history story that goes into a deeper history story. Clearly, one of the messages here is that, even for present day Dana, there are still issues (especially her marriage to a white man). One can look at the novel as very prescient in the idea that for ever advancement, we are always being pulled back by the wrong people. 

Sad that it is still true even 46 years after the novel was published. 

RANT

Which leads me to a little rant. 

Kindred, in my opinion, should be taught in every high school in America. The fact that it is one of several books that, even recently, have been banned in my country at certain schools, proves Butler's point completely. 

We make progress but are pulled back. 

This book should be taught because it tells the truth. 

White people enslaved back people in this country. In a very real and horrifying sense, it is part of how this country managed to be built. This needs to be discussed openly and honestly and often. 

I will not lie--- I am sickened by the many arguments against CRT, the arguments that ban books by Toni Morrison and Octavia E. Butler and many others--- sickened and honestly exasperated.  No one is saying that any of us white people today are responsible for enslaving black people in the 1800s. But here is the simple truth:  we white people have benefited and continue to benefit from the white supremacy that help build this country. This is not opinion, It is fact. And white people are the only ones who can really fix the problem of white supremacy, because we are the ones who made it and continue to benefit from it. 

And it starts by taking this accountability of our history AND our present. 

Rant over (for now). 

FINAL TAKEAWAYS

Read Kindred. It is enriching as well as being absolutely exciting and gripping. Fiction can make a difference and it is writers like Octavia E. Butler who can remind us. 

Please feel free to tell me your thoughts about my new friend Kindred in the comments., and join me next time with a while new friend. 

My New Friend, "SEA OF TRANQUILITY" by Emily St. John Mandel

 

A photo of me and my new friend, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Hi. My name is Bobby Keniston, and my only friends are books. This isn't such a bad thing. There are many dashes in the "Pro" column, in fact. Books don't have to stay away from you during a pandemic, for one thing, right? No nasal swabbing a book before you can invite them to your party or to share your home...

My newest friend I want to talk about today is Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Mandel has blown up on the literary scene, especially since her fourth novel, 2014's Station Eleven was a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke award. Station Eleven, which centers around a pandemic, has been discussed widely again these last few years (wonder why?) and has been made into a critically-acclaimed limited series for HBO Max. Mandel's most recent novel was The Glass Hotel, one of my favorite novels of 2020, which centers around a Ponzi scheme and a kind of ghost story. 

Before I get into many details about Sea of Tranquility, my new pal, I should start by saying that Emily St. John Mandel is quickly becoming one of my favorite novelists, along with the likes of Jesmyn Ward, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Neil Gaiman. True, I have only The Glass Hotel and my new friend, but both novels are just that good. 

HOW I MET MY NEW FRIEND

As I mentioned above, I read Emily St. John Mandel's previous novel, The Glass Hotel, back in 2020. I picked that book up at the Thompson Free Library. It became such a good friend, that I anxiously looked forward Mandel's next book, and, well, here it is. I purchased a copy, and have since ordered Station Eleven as well. It is my intention now to go back and get her first three novels, too. 

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

Sea of Tranquility doesn't have an easy "elevator pitch," as Mandel has said herself in an interview. But here is a basic rundown:

Sea of Tranquility goes through different time periods, beginning with 1912, where we follow Edwin St. John St. Andrew (yes, a young man with two saints in his name) who ends up "exiled" after anti-colonial remarks at a dinner party to the forests of Canada in the fictional Caiette (also seen in The Glass Hotel). It is here that the young man has a strange experience in the forest, as if being transported and surrounded by violin music. He also meets a mysterious man pretending to be a priest who calls himself Roberts. 

Next, Mandel transports us to 2020 for a section called Mirella and Vincent who were both characters in The Glass Hotel ( don't worry--- you don't have to read The Glass Hotel  to understand this book, though I do highly recommend it just the same). Mirella's husband was a victim of Vincent's husband's Ponzi scheme and lost everything. Vincent disappeared years ago, and Mirella wants to know what happened to her, so she goes to a concert being held by Vincent's brother Paul. Paul shows an old video tape of a strange occurrence videotaped by Vincent when they were children. It is a brief moment, and very similar to what happened to Edwin in 1912. After the concert Mirella meets with Paul, who is also being spoken to by a strange man named Gaspery. But Mirella seems to remember Gaspery from somewhere...

From here, we can (literally) fly to the moon when we meet Olive Llewelyn in the year 2203, a writer on a book tour, currently on Earth. Olive lives in the second colony on the moon, and is overwhelmed a bit by the tour, missing her husband Dion and their young daughter Sylvie. Olive wrote a very successful novel about a pandemic and may be close to finding herself in a very real pandemic of her own. After meeting a "journalist" by the name of Gaspery Roberts, named after a character from her book, she wonders if it may not be wiser to cut the book tour short. 

And this brings us to the very heart and crux of the book, which is why I don't really want to say anything more. Clearly, Gaspery is the unifying character of these three threads in time. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND

Sea of Tranquility packs the richness of an epic into 255 quick-turning pages. Mandel is skillful at weaving plot threads into a beautiful tapestry--- so skilled, in fact, that I find myself succumbing to this completely unoriginal metaphor. But I'm not the great writer, here. That would be Emily St. John Mandel. 

Everyone is talking how this is Mandel's most speculative fiction to date, and while that may be true, it is still, at its core, a very human story and one we can all relate to, especially now. 

Olive Llewelyn, the writer, while not a complete stand in for Mandel, was clearly written with a deep knowledge of what it is like to be a successful writer of a pandemic novel who is now living during a pandemic. These insights are some of the most poignant in the book. 

"I suppose anything written this year is likely to be deranged," a character says of a piece being written during the pandemic lockdown. I am sure Mandel said the same thing time and again, but make no mistake--- Sea of Tranquility is only deranged in the most relatable way for those of us who have survived 2020 and 2021. This novel could not or would not have been written without the pandemic, at least not in the way it is given to us now. 

I suppose we can chalk that up to a little bit of bright side. 

FINAL TAKEAWAY

Enough of this. Just go get the book. 

Thanks for reading my thoughts on my new friend, Sea of Tranquility. Come on back when I make a new friend!