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samjpetto 's review for:
Titus Groan
by Mervyn Peake
Her hand is unsteady as she lifts the wax above the head of Titus and the wavering flame makes it leap. His eyes are very wide open. As he sees the light his mouth puckers and works, and the heart of the hearth contracts with love as he totters at the wellhead of tears.
Titus Groan is a contradiction. It’s somehow staggering in its scope and myopic at the same time. The novel takes place almost exclusively in the decrepit, sprawling keep of Gormenghast, where a family and its servants maintain seemingly purposeless daily rituals out of an almost religious sense of familial duty.
Can it continue? How could it possibly? Two characters give us the sense things will be changing: Steerpike, a conniving servant with red eyes who seems intent on disrupting everything to secure his own power, and the titular Titus Groan, a newborn son who is set to inherit his father’s burden.
Mervyn Peake was incredibly inventive for his time. For example, in this novel you’ll find chapters that abruptly shift us into characters’ first-person trains of thought and interstitial scenes that give certain sections a theatrical feel. (I’m thinking of Nanny Slagg telling Fuchsia who will be at Titus’ birthday gathering as we flit from person to person.)
The book drips with details, and evocative names like Sepulchrave and Swelter paint a picture of an imposingly gothic setting, but perhaps with a bit of a wink.
At times, the detail can be too much. The book feels about 100 pages too long. But with that said, this deserves reading and given the influence on later works and the boldness of it all, I’m giving it a 4.5/5.
Titus Groan is a contradiction. It’s somehow staggering in its scope and myopic at the same time. The novel takes place almost exclusively in the decrepit, sprawling keep of Gormenghast, where a family and its servants maintain seemingly purposeless daily rituals out of an almost religious sense of familial duty.
Can it continue? How could it possibly? Two characters give us the sense things will be changing: Steerpike, a conniving servant with red eyes who seems intent on disrupting everything to secure his own power, and the titular Titus Groan, a newborn son who is set to inherit his father’s burden.
Mervyn Peake was incredibly inventive for his time. For example, in this novel you’ll find chapters that abruptly shift us into characters’ first-person trains of thought and interstitial scenes that give certain sections a theatrical feel. (I’m thinking of Nanny Slagg telling Fuchsia who will be at Titus’ birthday gathering as we flit from person to person.)
The book drips with details, and evocative names like Sepulchrave and Swelter paint a picture of an imposingly gothic setting, but perhaps with a bit of a wink.
At times, the detail can be too much. The book feels about 100 pages too long. But with that said, this deserves reading and given the influence on later works and the boldness of it all, I’m giving it a 4.5/5.