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Titus Groan (Gormenghast Trilogy) [Paperback]

Mervyn Peake
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Book Description

5 Feb 1998 Gormenghast Trilogy
As the first novel opens, Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave, has just been born: he stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that stand for Gormenghast Castle. Inside, all events are predetermined by a complex ritual, lost in history, understood only by Sourdust, Lord of the Library. There are tears and strange laughter; fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings; dreams and violence and disenchantment contained within a labyrinth of stone. (20050107)

Frequently Bought Together

Titus Groan (Gormenghast Trilogy) + Gormenghast (Gormenghast Trilogy (Book Two)) + Titus Alone (Gormenghast Trilogy)
Price For All Three: £19.62

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Product details

  • Paperback: 512 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Classics; New Ed edition (5 Feb 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0749394927
  • ISBN-13: 978-0749394929
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 3.1 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 11,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Mr Peake's first novel holds one with its glittering eye - It has a genuine plot in the strictest sense, and it persuades you to read on simply in order to know what will happen - its gallery of characters is wonderful (Nation )

A gorgeous volcanic eruption... A work of extraordinary imagination (New Yorker )

The Gormenghast Trilogy is one of the most important works of the imagination to come out of [this] age (Anthony Burgess Spectator )

Book Description

A brilliantly sustained flight of gothic imagination; the first of the bestselling Gormenghast trilogy. (20050107)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 41 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The most pleasure I ever had from a book 15 Jan 2008
By John Ferngrove TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
I first read this when I was 14 whilst recovering from a chill, and I devoured it in a couple of days. I have read it, and its companions, 'Gormenghast' and 'Titus Alone', five or six times since, and hope and expect to read them a few more times yet.

You read these books for their extraordinary prose, which has a flavour somewhere in the region between Dickens and Dali. While the plot is huge, intricate and subtle, plot remains secondary. The reader must allow the dense, intricate prose to paint its vivid pictures in the mind, as strange and idiosyncratic as the illustrations and paintings for which Peake is also famous. As a celebration of the English language he is there alongside the best of writers. Those in search of a good yarn may find such writing tedious, but for those who like to savour language this is a feast.

The books are frequently described as fantasy, but they are fantasy in a sense entirely distinct from the heroic fantasy tradition resurrected from the Norse, by Tolkien, Lewis and their like. In the world of Gormenghast what heroism there is, is bent and twisted and always ultimately futile. There is little space for moral manoeuvre where the roles of most characters are prescribed to a minute degree by an immutable ancient tradition. The world of Gormenghast is a vast crumbling castle, that has stood for time immemorial, isolated from the world outside. It could be anywhere or anytime. It is populated by a cast of characters made exquisitely eccentric by the castle and the entrenched, stifling tradition it represents. The wonderful characters whom we come to love and loathe include;

Dr Prunesquallor, obliged by his position to behave as a buffoon, but the one source of sanity throughout the insane unfolding of events. He is endlessly patient with his hugely neurotic sister, Irma.
Countess Gertrude, formidable mistress of a thousand snow white cats, who has more regard for her birds than for people.
Earl Sepulchrave, 76th Earl of Groan and father of Titus. He will go very mad.
Lady Fuschia. The sweet, innocent, vain, dear Fuschia whom we want so badly to protect from the cloying menace that surrounds her.
The mad aunts, Cora and Clarice, who take tea each afternoon in the boughs of a tree that grows horizontally from the side of the castle walls.
The fanatically loyal manservant to the Earl, Mr Flay, whose knees crack like pistols, and the despicable chef, Abiatha Swelter.
And then there is the wicked, wicked boy, Steerpike, who pulls the wings off flies and seeks to control them all.

These and numerous other more or less strange characters comprise the world of Gormenghast, into which is born Titus, destined to be the 77th Earl.

Whilst a whole industry has grown up around the emulation of Tolkien, the same cannot be said for Peake's Gormenghast, the other key 'fantasy' work of the mid-20th Century. This is because Peake was touched with a unique and original vision in the way that Kafka and Sartre were. Such writers were able to see through the contingencies of our world into other worlds so close to our own in form, yet utterly different in light and atmosphere, allowing them to create a backdrop for a strange and subtly distorted form of human experience. As events unfold we watch as the characters are deformed, each in there own bizarre way.

Having read a lot of fine literature I would say that these are among the world's great books and would be worthy of a posthumous Nobel. Everybody I know who has read them has had their imagination uniquely affected by the experience.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Mass Market Paperback
i first read this book 13 years ago and it still exercises a hold over me. the beauty of the prose is similar in many respects to Dickens but Peake has taken the victorian style and mutated it into something fragile. the book is set in a crumbling castle whose inhabitants lives are shored up by an empty series of fantastic rituals, echoing a long lost splendour from which they derived their meaning. the force of change arrives in the shape of the diabolic kitchen boy, Steerpike and the young inheritor of the castle is sucked in by him, as are all the other odd characters that populate the castle. it's like 'name of the rose' meets 'bleak house'. a compelling and beautifully poetic read that will lead you to the other two books (not as good as Peake was to soon die of sleeping sickness - the third book is reconstructed from his notes). after all this time, i still am in love with book and remain convinced that Peake is an unique and under-studied genius
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Oh Dear 18 May 2012
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Oh dear. What a shame. I read this book years ago and it is fantastic. I suspect the kindle version has been scanned using some sort of OCR software which has made too many annoying mistakes. Why don't the publishers proof read? Get the paperback...Great book, shame about the lazy publishing.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Titus Groan
Mervyn Peake at his querkiest best and what vocabulary
book in great condition as if never been read
very enjoyable read if you have the querk of mind to like that sort... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Lin
3.0 out of 5 stars Poor quality ebook
Titus Groan is a great read. Peake's descriptions are evocative, enchanting, disturbing and downright weird. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mary Pollard
5.0 out of 5 stars Deeply complex and well-crafted, this haunting gothic masterpiece is a...
Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy is a work of literary genius, containing such exquisitely detailed and stunningly beautiful narrative. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Lucinda
4.0 out of 5 stars Titus Groan (Gormenghast)
I gave Titus Groan 4/5 stars because, having begun reading with low expectations (this was all for a school project) I was pleasantly surprised to find quite the opposite. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Morgan Hoskins
3.0 out of 5 stars Different but in a Good way
synopsis isn't an easy task for such a book as this, as not a lot seems to happen plotwise, but there is a huge interaction between characters and things are always in the offing... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Ste to the J
5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant!!
I was very wary of this CD as I had previously read and thoroughly enjoyed the Gormenghast trilogy. But Rupert Degas
has proved to be a wonderful narrator. Read more
Published 8 months ago by jenny Cee
4.0 out of 5 stars Good reading, but abridgement is frustrating
This is one of my very favourite works of fiction. I really wanted to like this audio version more.

The reading itself has a lot going for it - Degas characterises... Read more
Published 17 months ago by A. Reed
5.0 out of 5 stars An unforgettable experience
This is a simply beautiful, wonderful book. It affected me deeply when I read it.

It's also a unique book, in my experience, in that this is a fantastical, farcical and... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Stephen Hudson
5.0 out of 5 stars Nobody else writes like Mervyn Peake
This book is simply one of my favourite books of all time, if not my favourite. Mervyn Peake has a way with the English language that very few authors have - his imagination and... Read more
Published 19 months ago by izzy33
4.0 out of 5 stars Titus Groan
`Titus Groan' is the first book in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy and it opens with the birth of Titus, the heir to the imposing Gormenghast castle. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Spider Monkey
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