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chaumps 's review for:
Titus Groan
by Mervyn Peake
Wow. What a strange and compelling read. I’ve yet to encounter any other author with Peake’s ability to convey every painstaking, morbid detail of each scene in such complete and fascinating verbosity.
To me, the Gormenghast Trilogy is much more akin to visual art than any type of literary narrative we might typically expect. Peake’s virtuosity as an illustrator is heavily employed in this regard throughout the story. Like a Renaissance painting, it is rich in exquisite detail; a live tapestry of contemporaneous happenings. What thinly strung plot there is in this story is used less as a means of driving narrative and more as visual cue, goading the eye from one ornate periphery of the artwork to the next. From the lonely Steerpike ravenously biting into a wrinkled pear in a dusty forgotten attic, to the whirling greasy cyclone of Swelter’s blade reflecting the sparse moonlight in the Hall of Spiders.
This is where the novel shines. In painting ludicrous scenes within the readers’ minds; scenes of crumbling destitute castles, crippling yet comical neuroses, morbid decrepitude of body, and multiple paragraphs describing the numerous folds of a man’s chin. Many of these snapshot scenes I will be happy to revisit in the years to come.
To me, the Gormenghast Trilogy is much more akin to visual art than any type of literary narrative we might typically expect. Peake’s virtuosity as an illustrator is heavily employed in this regard throughout the story. Like a Renaissance painting, it is rich in exquisite detail; a live tapestry of contemporaneous happenings. What thinly strung plot there is in this story is used less as a means of driving narrative and more as visual cue, goading the eye from one ornate periphery of the artwork to the next. From the lonely Steerpike ravenously biting into a wrinkled pear in a dusty forgotten attic, to the whirling greasy cyclone of Swelter’s blade reflecting the sparse moonlight in the Hall of Spiders.
This is where the novel shines. In painting ludicrous scenes within the readers’ minds; scenes of crumbling destitute castles, crippling yet comical neuroses, morbid decrepitude of body, and multiple paragraphs describing the numerous folds of a man’s chin. Many of these snapshot scenes I will be happy to revisit in the years to come.