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elizafiedler's review against another edition
2.0
The writing style is nothing remotely like Peake. It's missing all the attention to surprising detail and the whimsy.
steveatwaywords's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
While the completionist in me is satisfied that I have (somehow) reached the "end" of the series of books around Gormenghast, I can't pretend that this volume added anything significant to the allure of the first two books.
Yes, it's a grave undertaking to build an entire novel from a fragment which remained, but this work compounds the problems of the third book, being a more or less random assortment of unexpected encounters with people as Titus wanders, all either unreasonable or unreasonably reasonable. Titus, mostly inexplicably, is unable to latch himself to any, ever world weary. And so he wanders more, and occasionally Gilmore pronounces these seemingly enormous revelations about Titus's own psyche that have rarely any sound connection to the encounters nor to an important characterization which allows the book to . . . conclude.
Outside of a few new characters who more or less retain the eccentricity of the first two books, there is little here that satisfied.
Yes, it's a grave undertaking to build an entire novel from a fragment which remained, but this work compounds the problems of the third book, being a more or less random assortment of unexpected encounters with people as Titus wanders, all either unreasonable or unreasonably reasonable. Titus, mostly inexplicably, is unable to latch himself to any, ever world weary. And so he wanders more, and occasionally Gilmore pronounces these seemingly enormous revelations about Titus's own psyche that have rarely any sound connection to the encounters nor to an important characterization which allows the book to . . . conclude.
Outside of a few new characters who more or less retain the eccentricity of the first two books, there is little here that satisfied.
jgwc54e5's review against another edition
3.0
Based on a fragment written by Mervyn Peake, his widow has completed this fourth Gormenghast novel. I found it disappointing though there were moments that were sad, or entertaining or colourful, it never really got into my imagination like the original works and at times it just meanders. Interesting I guess, but not essential.
phelpsa64's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this book. It felt emotionally true in a way that few things really are. The plot might disappoint you if you are just coming from the main series, but as catharsis it is magnificent.
octavia_cade's review
3.0
Mervyn Peake may be my favourite author. His "Gormenghast" series is outstanding, and if Peake hadn't succumbed to neurological disease he would have continued to write. "Titus Awakes" is the work of his wife, Maeve Gilmore, extrapolating from the thinnest of fragments left behind, and it is proof positive that one can marry a genius but not continue on for them.
I wanted to love it. But the characteristic grotesquerie of Peake, the Baroque prose you can drown in, just isn't there. Gilmore tries, and the mimicry of style is in some places clever, but compared to the immensity of Gormenghast castle she has produced a scaffolding at best - the same sense of shape, with none of the depth. "Titus Awakes" feels like stepping stones, an episodic skipping of here-to-there that doesn't have the cohesion, the interconnection, of Peake's previous works.
This isn't surprising. Gilmore isn't so much writing a continuation as she is an exploration - what life is like without her husband. It is hard to read the final parts of the book and not recognise Peake himself as the patient in the sanatorium, his mind and intelligence failing as his wife sits beside him and waits for the end. It's not just the patient, of course - Peake appears in the book, unnamed, a couple more times after that and it is unutterably sad - but sad because of context, and not because of text. One can't blame Gilmore for reaching out, for trying to reconcile her husband's greatest work with the ending of his life - but it's not "Gormenghast", not even close, and I wonder if the fragment should have been left well enough alone.
I wanted to love it. But the characteristic grotesquerie of Peake, the Baroque prose you can drown in, just isn't there. Gilmore tries, and the mimicry of style is in some places clever, but compared to the immensity of Gormenghast castle she has produced a scaffolding at best - the same sense of shape, with none of the depth. "Titus Awakes" feels like stepping stones, an episodic skipping of here-to-there that doesn't have the cohesion, the interconnection, of Peake's previous works.
This isn't surprising. Gilmore isn't so much writing a continuation as she is an exploration - what life is like without her husband. It is hard to read the final parts of the book and not recognise Peake himself as the patient in the sanatorium, his mind and intelligence failing as his wife sits beside him and waits for the end. It's not just the patient, of course - Peake appears in the book, unnamed, a couple more times after that and it is unutterably sad - but sad because of context, and not because of text. One can't blame Gilmore for reaching out, for trying to reconcile her husband's greatest work with the ending of his life - but it's not "Gormenghast", not even close, and I wonder if the fragment should have been left well enough alone.
smcleish's review against another edition
3.0
Also published on my blog here
The Gormenghast trilogy, by far Mervyn Peake's best known work as a writer, has many fans, including myself. And fans always want more, so we were intrigued when the publication of Titus Awakes was announced last year. Maeve Gilmore was Peake's widow (and, like her husband, an artist), who edited the fascinating but uneven compilation of Peake's less well known work, [b:Peake's Progress|39265|Peake's Progress|Mervyn Peake|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|328220]. One of the items included there was the sketchy plan which eventually became Titus Awakes: a list of single words which form the themes of each of the chapters. There was also a draft of the first chapter, which I don't think was included (my copy of Peake's Progress being packed in a cardboard box in the garage, I can't easily check). Ironically, this completion of a lost novel was itself lost on Gilmmore's death in the eighties, only to be found in 2011.
The end of [b:Titus Alone|3170462|Titus Alone|Mervyn Peake|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|3343987] found Titus wandering in the vicinity of his ancestral home, Gormenghast Castle, before deciding to leave again. Titus Awakes begins at this point, with a brief scene between the Countess, Titus' mother, and Doctor Prunesquallor, also a character in the earlier books and fellow inhabitant of the castle. After these couple of pages, the rest of the chapter follows Titus closely, as he descends from the mountain on which the castle is built and sets off again. This is the end of the material that Peake wrote, and Gilmore then continues in the same vein.
The story consists of a series of bizarre adventures, much like those in Titus Alone, until the young man ends up in Sark, a plan which Peake divulged to his wife. Once this happens, the story has much more life; Maeve Gilmore was pretty clearly more comfortable writing about a real place familiar to her. Parts are clearly based on the writer's own life (and acknowledged as such in the introduction). This includes a sombre episode in which Titus, working temporarily at a mental hospital, meets Mervyn Peake as a patient visited by his wife Maeve Gilmore. Though all three do leave the hospital - Peake being misdiagnosed - its unending grey hopelessness is portrayed in what is probably the best written and certainly the most striking section of the novel.
The intention of the story, as in Titus Alone, is to use some of the external details of the situations in which Titus finds himself as allegorical mirrors of his growth as an individual. This means that the narrative is again heavily focused on the protagonist. I find this something of a problem with both books, as to me, and, I suspect, to many other readers, the most interesting aspect of [b:Titus Groan|3216462|Titus Groan|Mervyn Peake|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|3250394] and [b:Gormenghast|3170463|Gormenghast (King Penguin)|Mervyn Peake|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|3599885] is the castle and the strange, ritualised lives of the grotesques who live there. While Titus psychologically needs to escape, and never quite manages to do so, the young man at the end is not as interesting as he is as the Earl of Groan, centre of the castle's culture, and the people he meets, no matter how strange, are never as interesting as the inhabitants of the castle. It must be said, too, that Peake's imagination for the bizarre is better than Gilmore's, making Titus Alone a more interesting read than Titus Awakes.
Titus Awakes is no masterpiece, no stunning new addition to the Peake canon. Few readers will have been expecting it to be, especially if Titus Alone seems less than stellar to them already. What it does offer is a glimpse at the intentions which Peake had for the later adventures of his best known character, and a measure of resolution to a story which was lacking it. My overall rating is 3/5 mainly because it is most like my least favourite novel in the original trilogy.
The Gormenghast trilogy, by far Mervyn Peake's best known work as a writer, has many fans, including myself. And fans always want more, so we were intrigued when the publication of Titus Awakes was announced last year. Maeve Gilmore was Peake's widow (and, like her husband, an artist), who edited the fascinating but uneven compilation of Peake's less well known work, [b:Peake's Progress|39265|Peake's Progress|Mervyn Peake|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|328220]. One of the items included there was the sketchy plan which eventually became Titus Awakes: a list of single words which form the themes of each of the chapters. There was also a draft of the first chapter, which I don't think was included (my copy of Peake's Progress being packed in a cardboard box in the garage, I can't easily check). Ironically, this completion of a lost novel was itself lost on Gilmmore's death in the eighties, only to be found in 2011.
The end of [b:Titus Alone|3170462|Titus Alone|Mervyn Peake|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|3343987] found Titus wandering in the vicinity of his ancestral home, Gormenghast Castle, before deciding to leave again. Titus Awakes begins at this point, with a brief scene between the Countess, Titus' mother, and Doctor Prunesquallor, also a character in the earlier books and fellow inhabitant of the castle. After these couple of pages, the rest of the chapter follows Titus closely, as he descends from the mountain on which the castle is built and sets off again. This is the end of the material that Peake wrote, and Gilmore then continues in the same vein.
The story consists of a series of bizarre adventures, much like those in Titus Alone, until the young man ends up in Sark, a plan which Peake divulged to his wife. Once this happens, the story has much more life; Maeve Gilmore was pretty clearly more comfortable writing about a real place familiar to her. Parts are clearly based on the writer's own life (and acknowledged as such in the introduction). This includes a sombre episode in which Titus, working temporarily at a mental hospital, meets Mervyn Peake as a patient visited by his wife Maeve Gilmore. Though all three do leave the hospital - Peake being misdiagnosed - its unending grey hopelessness is portrayed in what is probably the best written and certainly the most striking section of the novel.
The intention of the story, as in Titus Alone, is to use some of the external details of the situations in which Titus finds himself as allegorical mirrors of his growth as an individual. This means that the narrative is again heavily focused on the protagonist. I find this something of a problem with both books, as to me, and, I suspect, to many other readers, the most interesting aspect of [b:Titus Groan|3216462|Titus Groan|Mervyn Peake|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|3250394] and [b:Gormenghast|3170463|Gormenghast (King Penguin)|Mervyn Peake|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|3599885] is the castle and the strange, ritualised lives of the grotesques who live there. While Titus psychologically needs to escape, and never quite manages to do so, the young man at the end is not as interesting as he is as the Earl of Groan, centre of the castle's culture, and the people he meets, no matter how strange, are never as interesting as the inhabitants of the castle. It must be said, too, that Peake's imagination for the bizarre is better than Gilmore's, making Titus Alone a more interesting read than Titus Awakes.
Titus Awakes is no masterpiece, no stunning new addition to the Peake canon. Few readers will have been expecting it to be, especially if Titus Alone seems less than stellar to them already. What it does offer is a glimpse at the intentions which Peake had for the later adventures of his best known character, and a measure of resolution to a story which was lacking it. My overall rating is 3/5 mainly because it is most like my least favourite novel in the original trilogy.
lv2's review against another edition
A nice coda to the series, though a bit stunted, it cannot function at all without knowledge of the Gormenghast trilogy and it lacks the wonderful strangeness of Peake's storytelling.
esperata's review against another edition
3.0
This book's composition gives a very real sense that it was grown from a few simple ideas. The first few chapters are much shorter than later chapters and feel more disconnected. This suits the story well as it exentuates Titus' return to health and life.
Things happen to Titus but he is always removed from characters and events. As Titus tells us himself, he would for ever be an onlooker in life and death.
Things happen to Titus but he is always removed from characters and events. As Titus tells us himself, he would for ever be an onlooker in life and death.
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