T;LDR: Grotesque, bizarre, with dense prose filled with descriptions, Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake is hailed a fantastic work of gothic fantasy literature. And it is, once you get into the rhythm of the words on the page.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Some people will find this book incredibly hard to read or boring or both. And I understand why that would be the case. The sentences are densely constructed; they twist and bend as much as the Gormenghast Castle does – and that may be the point.
I found it fascinating, revolting, horrifying, and so bizarre as to be hard to describe. The characters almost rival the setting…almost. The story line is slow, with side plots for secondary characters, and it seems to be building to a larger crescendo than is in this current volume (it is a four-volume series and apparently the author planned to write Titus’ entire life story, but died before he could).
And yet, most of the characters grow and change. Their perspectives altered from the day Titus is born – the first part of the book – to the day he is two years old – the last part of the book.
I’m getting ahead of myself, but it’s easy to do with this story, because the story itself isn’t as compelling as the atmosphere and descriptions of the setting, the characters, their ritualistic practices and formalities, their oddities and crazy natures.
The Plot
I’m going to attempt to focus on the plot. This book is based upon the birth of the heir, Titus Groan. The same day as Titus is born, the villain of the piece – Steerpike – is also introduced. Steerpike’s journey to gain power and manipulate the people who live in the castle is the underlining thread of the story. But you don’t see his part of it, not really, until chapter 17, when we learn what has become of him from being shoved and locked into the Octagonal room in chapter 6 by the main servant to the Earl, Flay. Sixty pages pass while we get to know Fuschia, Nanny Slagg, and the various other occupants in the castle.
And then he returns and makes slow and steady progress on his plans to find a better situation for himself than the kitchens with the rather large and scary Swelter, the chef. Each of the main characters have their parts to play as well, so Steerpike’s rise is woven throughout the many other tragedies and horrors befalling the characters in this book.
- Flay, who spends most of the time running around trying to solve problems and avoid Swelter.
- Swelter, the chef, planning on killing Flay, the main manservant because they hate each other.
- Gertrude, the Earl’s wife, who spends most of her time talking to and feeding birds or her multitude of white cats.
- The Earl, who is just as absent in mind as his wife, except his vices are the rituals of the castle and his books in the library.
- Fuschia, the daughter, who has a fanciful imagination, but who ultimately should have been the one to inherit the unending rituals of the castle. She truly loves it and feels it deep in her bones.
- Nanny Slagg, the one left to raise both children, and the only one to show Fuschia affection and love. She’s also so tiny that there are many points in the book where she’s picked up and tucked under an arm of Flay, the doctor, Steerpike and others.
- Dr. Prunesquallor, who laughs ‘ha ha ha ha ha’ more than he should, unless it is an important conversation. He does take his healing capabilities quite seriously and he likes Fuschia.
- Steerpike, the seventeen-year-old villain, who started in the kitchens, but wormed his way out of them and into a much higher station than he should’ve had.
There are others – the twin sisters, Cora and Clarice, Irma Prunesquallor (the doctor’s sister), Rottcodd, the keeper of the carvings, Sourdust, the historian and overseer of all rituals, and a handful of other minor characters as well, but none of these are as relevant to the story as the ones already listed out.
I don’t even know how to discuss the plot really, except to lay out the cast and characters and call it done. Oh, except I forgot the main character – Gormenghast Castle. It is apparently so large that you can get lost in endless corridors, rooms no longer in use (there was an aviary room, no longer functioning for example), with its Hall of Cats, Hall of Spiders, the Tower of Flints, the Hall of Bright Carvings, the Library, and trees growing in the walls and their roots everywhere.
What I Liked & Liked Less
The book is slow, meandering, and deeply focuses on one crazy character or their antics at a time. There’s even one chapter where each person’s perspective of an important event – The Dark Breakfast – is shared one at a time, all of them mentioning a thud happening at the end of their section (Fuschia, fainting and her head hitting the table).
It starts, as I mentioned, with Titus being born and ends with Titus returning to the castle at the age of two as the new Earl (Spoilers here… Sorry, but I won’t tell you how the first Earl died – I don’t think I could do it justice even if I tried). And a whole heap of nothing and everything happens in between.
I liked this book. It was tricky to read, required a fully functioning brain and the right attention span. It took me longer than usual to read it as well due to its sentence structure. It left me with questions, anger at the evil Steerpike, pity for Flay, worry for Fuschia, and annoyance at the continual twitterings of Nanny Slagg.
It is an atmospheric book that is more about the picture Mervyn Peake painted than the characters within it, but then he was a visual artist, first and foremost. That comes across in the first sentence all the way to the last.
I can’t say what I disliked here because I can’t pull it apart from the narrative and prose. I disliked the characters, but then I was meant to. I did find Keda’s chapters a bit boring…I could’ve skipped those and been perfectly happy, so there is something I disliked.
To Sum Up (too late!)
Overall, this is a gothic fantasy novel without any major fantasy elements. It features fanciful characters, a monstrosity of a castle, and villain you definitely won’t like (which is a good thing).
Would I recommend this book? Yes, but only if you like reading Russian novels, the sort where you have to chew through the sentences to find the meaning. Or other very complicated and dense prose.
I liked it. I may even read book two in a bit.
About the Author
Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books, though the Titus books would be more accurate: the three works that exist were the beginning of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, following his protagonist Titus Groan from cradle to grave, but Peake’s untimely death prevented completion of the cycle, which is now commonly but erroneously referred to as a trilogy. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien’s studies of mythology and philology.
Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived in London, and he was commissioned to produce portraits of well-known people. Although he gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and his friends included Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene. His works are now included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Imperial War Museum.
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