Mervyn Peake (1911–1968)

This is one of those books that I've always meant to read ... this year I swear! I am so glad that it finally made it's way into my active TBR. Titus Groan is most definitely not an easy read, the language itself carries weight. This is the kind of book to be read at a time when you can savour every word, every turn of phrase.

You can feel the corridors closing in around you, feeling the castle itself disapprove of you not being in your destined place. The characters making their way through show more their quotidian lives until disrupted by one who refuses to stay in his place, who envies what he sees and manipulates those around him for his benefit. I imagine that without Steerpike as a catalyst acting on all the petty grievances that they would have just simmered along. That Cora and Clarice would keep resenting Lady Gertrude but never take any action. That Swelter and Flay would cut at each other with words rather than something sharper.

I'm definitely anticipating continuing this series. show less

I first read The Gormenghast trilogy many years ago.The world Peake created in Gormenghast is real on it’s own terms. It has history, culture and its own rituals and traditions. The novel is poetical, rich in imagination, description and characters. It all came alive as I read on and the same magic I felt the first time was still there.

It was first published in 1946 but because it’s about an imaginary world it hasn’t dated at all. Yes, it’s slow-moving, but with a book like this show more that’s essential as there’s so much to absorb. The names of the characters are Dickensian, farcical and eccentric. It’s a story of good and evil, raising issues about equality, age versus youth, tradition versus change, destruction and violence, and insanity. It’s grotesque in parts, sensual and tender in others. It is brilliant.

It’s impossible to summarise in a few paragraphs. It begins with the birth of Titus, soon to be the 77th Earl of Gormenghast and ends when he is almost two years old. His father, Lord Sepulchrave has endured despair and then madness after his beloved library was burnt down and Steerpike, a disrespectful youth, has clawed his way out of the castle’s kitchen to a position of some power, by manipulation and deceit.

Titus thus inherits that immense structure – Gormenghast Castle and its surrounding kingdom and the possibility of change is in the air:

"There would be tears and there would be strange laughter. Fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings. And dreams, and violence, and disenchantment.

And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. and love itself will cry for insurrection! For tomorrow is also a day – and Titus has entered his stronghold." (pp 505-6) show less

I expected TITUS GROAN, (in which we follow the seventy-seventh Earl of Groan through the first year and a bit of his life), to be dense, wordy and difficult. I'd read scads of reviews that emphasized Peake's verbosity, and a quick scan of the first page seemed to bear them out. I figured I was in for a slog, albeit an enjoyable one. I prepared myself for at least five days of reading; six or seven seemed more likely.

It is indeed wordy. I've heard it said that Peake never uses two words when show more eighteen will do, and this is very, very true. But for all that, it's surprisingly readable. The book is broken into segments, not chapters, and most of them are ten pages or less. I found it fairly easy to use these segments to plot my reading. I couldn't exactly read quickly, but I still managed a solid and satisfying hundred and fifty pages per day.

The whole thing is just so interesting! The moldering castle of Gormenghast is a world all its own, and Peake limns it with absolute conviction. The castle's rituals and traditions seem strange and grotesque to us, but the characters believe in them to the core. They navigate via a most peculiar moral and social compass; all their actions and interactions seem to have been twisted a quarter turn to the left of what we in the western world would do if faced with a similar situation. And these actions are unquestionably the focus here. Peake isn't interested in time so much as space. He's perfectly willing to use up a page or six on some small, inconsequential detail that is nevertheless vitally important to the characters or their setting. It makes for some fascinating reading.

And on top of that, it's occasionally quite funny. Many a time, Peake's ponderous sentences made me laugh aloud, and some of his imagery is just priceless. One of my favourite scenes involves a bizarre ritual in which the infant Titus is placed inside an open book, the pages of which are safety-pinned together at the top. It's such a strange, surreal image, and the characters treat the whole thing so seriously. I'm not sure it's meant to be funny, but I found it hilarious.

As much as I enjoyed the book as a whole, I must say that the last hundred and fifty pages didn't do quite so much for me as the first chunk. I took a break (read: slept) right before Titus's birthday Breakfast, a lengthy scene in which Peake abandons the past tense in favour of the present. Alas, he has some trouble sticking to his chosen tense; every few sentences or so, he slips back into the past in a most jarring fashion. It bugged the hell out of me, and I had a lot of trouble getting back in to the story.

But that issue aside, this was excellent. I really enjoyed it, and am looking forward to reading GORMENGHAST good and soon. I highly recommend it, but be forewarned: if you're expecting anything like a traditional fantasy story, you will be sorely disappointed.

(This review originally appeared in a somewhat lengthier form on my blog, Stella Matutina. show less

This is one of the most powerful and lavish fantasy worlds ever written. In the Castle of Gormenghast, the Family of Groan has ruled for 76 generations. 76 Earls have patiently trod in the ways of tradition, and no one has ever questioned the order of things. Life is run by a strict set of tomes on protocol and position, and to violate these laws is unthinkable. I don't just mean unlikely or shocking; I mean really unthinkable, inconceivable, unable to be imagined. Until one day a show more kitchen-boy finds himself unhappy with his lot in life, and begins the ascent to the Upstairs World...

Throughout the story there are many grotesque, Dickensian characters who are complex and intriguing. There is the clever, effeminate Dr. Prunesquallor, his men-obsessed sister Irma, Nannie Slagg, the nurse and general overseer of the servants, silent and grim Mr Flay, the Earl's manservant, Steerpike, the kitchen-boy whose cold ambition leads him to do unspeakable things, the unearthly twins, Their Ladyships Cora and Clarice, the Earl himself who lives in a sort of dreamworld, his wife who lives solely for her cats and birds, their daughter Fuchsia, wild and unhappy and untamed, and the person it all centers on, the young Titus Groan, the 77th Earl of Gormenghast.

Peake's writing is a thing of ponderous yet crystalline beauty. Every detail is carefully painted in, and the vocabulary of this man is simply astounding. He has a way of describing things, especially grotesque things like Mr Swelter the cook, that simply makes you see and hear and know the object described. It positively grips the reader. This story is a tangling thicket of dark, rich themes... obsession, tradition, suicide, the individual, the dead and the living. Some of the images could fall under the designation of "horror," but they never overtake the plot or characters.

The first two novels of the series (Titus Groan, Gormenghast) are far and away the best. I haven't read the third one again, Titus Alone, since my first reading. It was so random and pointless. Peake would have done much better to leave the tale where it ended in Gormenghast. Still, after the first two you are left wanting more of Peake's dark magic, and Titus Alone, though unfinished, is worth reading at least once. Highly recommended. show less