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Susanna Clarke: A True Narnia Fan

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  Warning: contains spoilers A while back, I wrote a blog entitled Let’s Talk About Narnia  in which I bemoaned the fact that many authors seem to express disappointment with Narnia because of its “Christian allegory”. I’ve always felt that to say so is to not really “get” Narnia. For a start, it’s not even an allegory! And it has so many hidden depths, so many influences. If you want to truly understand Narnia, you must understand C.S. Lewis as an academic, an intellectual, apologist and medievalist, who debated with his fellow intellectuals, JRR Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams a.k.a. The Inklings, and absorbed their ideas into his own.  Or you could read Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi . It’s a strange tale of a man called Piranesi (although he’s sure that’s not his name) who lives in a House of Gormenghast-like proportions, filled with statues, birds and tides. Twice a week, he meets with “The Other”, a surprisingly well-dressed and well-equipped man, whom Piranesi assists with h