3www 's review for:

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
4.5
adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
I first read this book as a teenager and fell in love with it. It is full of characters who are ugly and flawed and serve more as allegorical figures than real people, so yes, they may come across as one-dimensional. Each serves a purpose within the the overall story, though, which could conceivably be viewed as a satire of the English class system, maybe? Anyway, the book is poetic and artistic, I think some called it a picture painted with words. It fired my imagination for many years. The audiobook I listened to was about 17 hrs, so I think not this exact edition, but from Blackstone audio read by Simon Vance, who does a great job with the different characters, even using a different accent for many of them.
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