Titus Groan by
Mervyn Peake
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
In the words of Mrs. Slagg, "Oh my poor heart!" This book is definitely not an easy read! Part humorous, dull, convoluted and yet enticing, lets just say I am glad this book wasn't spoiled for me as a high school read, like say *cough* 'Great Expectations'.
The detail that an artist puts into paintings is what you get when that artist decides to write a book. I read another book by a contemporary artist, the highly publicized ' The Night Circus' and while in that case the story was dull, the writing pretentious, in 'Titus Groan' you get such intimate details of each and every scene, that you might be fooled into thinking the story is dull. I can assure you it is not! While not exactly your fast paced thriller of a fantasy, ' Titus Groan' (which dwells on expanding on every caricature of a character) is a wonderful stage setting to the protagonist whose name is the title of this novel. However, that means, you do not get to see him as much as the surroundings in which he is destined to thrive. I say thrive, because Gormenghast Castle at its best is a mad-house. A place full of strange characters. How did Peake even come up with them?
Each character is so well etched, that the next time I find someone named Cora, or Clarice, I am going to assume they are as batty as the twins in the book. The vocabulary is amazing and the names of the characters roll of your tongue. Soon, you'll love the many eccentricities, be it the stolidity of Mr Flay, the moroseness of the bibliophilic Lord Sepulchrave (I loved that name!), the frostiness of his wife, Gertrude, the batty helplessness of the twins Cora and Clarice, the dreaminess of Lady Fuchsia, the reverent love of the old Nannie Slagg, the jolly, nerdy Dr Prunesquallor (again, love it!), his intolerable sister, Irma with a tendency to repeat her words forcefully when making a point, the homicidal Abiatha Swelter and the cold, calculative, ambitious Steerpike. Against all of these, the castle of Gormenghast forms its own character, the expansive, crumbling walls holding fort for these many weirdos without falling apart altogether. The second book is called Gormenghast and I wondered many a times if these two books should have had their titles swapped.
The book was exhausting, and at many points I felt tired and did not want to read another word. But then some of the wonderful, comic lines would pop up in my mind and I wanted to see if there were more. Hell, the book was about to end and Titus was not even a boy! I wanted to know what was up with that. And then right towards the end there was a morbid twist, that despite the sluggish pace of the narrative kept me hooked.
Anyways, I'd not recommend this book to readers who prefer somewhat of a pace in their book. I fear they might end up ruining the rating of this weird yet likable ( for people like me) book.
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