Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An epic work of profound tragedy and astonishing beauty., 9 Dec 1997
By A Customer
I first read The Gormenghast Trilogy ("Titus Groan", "Gormenghast" and "Titus Alone") nearly 20 years ago as a teenager, after it was recommended to me by a friend. Having tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the posthumous Tolkein novel "The Silmarillion", I had almost given up on the fantasy genre. Thank God for Mervyn Peake. As I fell deeper and deeper into the trilogy it became my favorite work of literature, and a far, far supierior work to "Lord of the Rings". I have since read it 3 or 4 times and have not changed my mind. The first novel, Titus Groan, introduces the reader to a world that is at once mesmerizing and horrible. Very few of the characters are even remotely likable, but the reader is drawn to them nonetheless. It is Peake's triumph, then, to bring the reader to tears when these characters eventually meet their inevitable fates (all save the villainous Steerpike). The burning of the Library and it's consequences in "Titus Groan"is as violent as a rape. Titus' loss of the Thing in "Gormenghast" is more tragic than "Romeo and Juliet", "Othello" and "Oedipus" put together. Even the Countess commands total respect by the end of the second novel. The unspeakable blasphemy committed by young Titus leading into "Titus Alone" leaves us hollow with the loss of the monstrous castle, but it takes Titus into a world so far removed from his own that we hardly have time to notice. This is the story of Titus as an adult, in exile from all he has ever known, trying to come to terms with his irreversible actions. He enters a world that has more malevolence than Steerpike ever dreamed of, but also more real emotion, a first for Titus. His final (near) return to his birthplace triumphantly puts him on a new path, much the same way Britain and the world changed direction forever following World War II, and the way English literature changed forever following the publication of The Gormenghast Trilogy. It is one the finest peice of fiction ever written, and worthy of much more popular exposure than it has received in the 50 years since it was first published. I am proud to own a boxed (!) set of the Penguin paperback editions, complete with all of Peake's original illustrations.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Virtuosic Achievement; A Triumph of Imagination, 3 Dec 1997
By A Customer
Why is this book not given the recognition it deserves? Those who have read it cannot fail to be impressed by its power; Anthony Burgess hailed it as one of the best books of the century, and deservedly so. Peake has a virtuosic imagination. He is one of those few, remarkable writers who write with such sensual clarity that the reader reads 'through' the words on the page into an eidetic experience of the depicted world: that phenomenon uniquely capable in great literature in which writing is magically transparent to experience. He is arguably the best descriptive writer in literature, which makes his achievement all the more remarkable for being a work of pure imagination. For instance, to arbitrarily pick one example out of a book in which every scene is so imagined, the battle between Flay and Swelter in the spiderweb filled attic is a masterpiece of an imaginatively observed reality, rendered with such intense immediacy that one is there, observing every step, every parry, every iota of anxiety and tension moment to moment. And all in grand and beautiful language. (Truly gorgeous language. It may sound ridiculous, but I don't think I exaggerate when I say Peake's use of language is to 20th century english what Gibbon's was to the 18th: grand, sublime, precise, graceful, hypnotic, in love with words and language.) And though his characters are largely grotesques, he writes of them with such sympathy and with such spot-on characterization that he makes them credible living breathing entities. But his skill is not limited to description or characterization. He is able to capture complex and subtle relationships with surgical precision. To arbitrarily pick another example, the courtship scene between Bellgrove and Irma must rank as one of the most brilliantly comical set pieces in literature due to its farcical accuracy. To classify this work as fantasy is a disservice to his achievement. 'The Gormeghast Trilogy' transcends genre just as 'Moby Dick' transcends a fishing tale. Because while Peake's remarkable technical prowess alone should guarantee his place in the pantheon of great 20th century writers, it's his profound, and profoundly subtle, exploration of the motives behind--and effects of--power, complacency, ritual, and decay that puts him squarely in the center of the 20th century. If authors are the products of their history, then the Gormenghast trilogy provides an existential snapshot of the postwar years as only a handful of other works do (eg, Catch-22). The first book, as another reviewer here said, is like the appetizer for the second. The second book is the heart of the trilogy. The third book, as has also been remarked here, is the weakest. It is a great loss to literature that Peake lost his powers so early to illness in what should've been a long career. There are few books that can provide such ample rewards to the receptive reader. Once one enters Peake's world they never forget it. Though it is currently one of the unknown great works in world literature, I hope it will one day find its rightful place in the catalogue of literary masterpieces. It is a unique book, a triumph of imagination. Often a work of fiction is called 'an experience'; 'The Gormeghast Trilogy' is one of the few works in which such an ascription is not perjorative.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I challenge the greatest cinema directors to film this, 18 Mar 1999
By A Customer
The is the story of how a boy Earl, heir to the crumbling and limitless expanse of Gormenghast castle, evolves from innocent schoolboy to homicidal exile. Even as he faces the lethal murderer genius, he knows that he will betray all he has ever known and believed in. You will know the characters well. Bellgrove, the headmaster, Dr Prunesquallor the ebulliently camp physician, Fuschia the enchanted yet unfullfilled princess, the melancholy Lord Sepuclhrave. You may even cry at the utterly soul destroying poignany of tiny, tiny Nannie Slagg's un-appreciated devotion. Peake's characters are biblical parables in themselves. They go further than people can go, and some fail, some are destined to fail - and they must be like this. As a reader you cannot help calling on God him/herself to intervene because even as you know it is fiction, it is unbearable that certain situations exist, and worse, actually unfold right before your eyes. Be it for their exquisite beauty or their tragic bleakness. But what superb scope for cinematographic excellence. Lighting shots described down to the last, flickering, mote of dust. Pans across nature that combine the most majestic sweeps of China with progressively deteriorating archeological accumulata; intricate close-up vignettes from an Attenbrough documentary; and the random heaven or hell of conscienceless weather in its glorious range of power and subtlety. This is not merely a series of books. It is a rendition of the most striking events in a life. Or in many lives. What else can I say? There is so much rich vocabulary, that I shall have to re-read these tomes as I would a dictionary. And if I read them even one more time (I was read them when I was 12 years old, and since I have read them twice), I will re-double my literary dexterity. "You don't say!" as you might say. Check it out now.
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