Gormenghast

This was a remarkable fantasy novel, one unlike I haven’t read before. Its predecessor Titus Groan was of a magnificence of creating the universe of the castle Gormenghast, its inhabitants and outer dwellers, but in Gormenghast the castle takes center stage as it reveals more nooks, crannies, hidden pathways and secret windows than I could’ve imagined.

The story starts a few years after the ending of the first novel in this trilogy. Titus Groan begins with the birth of the 77^th earl of Gormenghast and ends with the death of the 76^th earl of Gormenghast when the former is turning one year old.

Gormenghast takes place when Titus is a boy of seven and he’s being brought up to rule in his father’s stead. On one hand he’s being educated as if he’s one of the common folks, but on the other hand he already is forced to undergo the many rituals that make up an ordinary day at the castle. All of the members who survived the first novel are again greeted in this second volume. Flay, Fuchsia, Steerpike, The Countess and many others. The main focus is on Titus, but the desires, schemes and worries of the others aren’t forgotten, which gives enormous depth to the novel.

The story-telling of Mervyn Peake is gothic to say the least. It isn’t ordinary English, it’s almost a work of art in which he tries to convey a life that centers around age old rituals and in a castle so big that none of its occupants realize its full capacity. Trying to contemplate the size and scale of the castle is like trying to fit an entire alien world into a teardrop, it just won’t happen. I don’t even think that the castle has given up all of her secrets. There’s still a third, a final novel, to be explored and even though I’m going to wait a while before I will dive in, I can’t wait to see what happens next. It’s going to be something else, as this volume ended with Titus leaving. Such a cliffhanger!

I’m a big fan of fantasy, especially when it’s completely out of the box, a world where barely anything can be related to the “real” world. The Gormenghast trilogy is daunting to say the least, but very rewarding once you set your mind to it. I’ve mastered the skillful word-weaving in which Mervyn Peake can describe their surroundings as well as the characters inner moods. I feel like I’ve discovered something very valuable here. A novel that I won’t lightly forget.

And can you believe that I’m probably the first that has ever checked out this novel in our library? It’s been there since 1999 and not even a single crease in its backbone.. It makes me feel a bit like I’m inhabiting an alien planet where no one speaks my language. 

Titus Groan

…and Titus has entered his stronghold.

And that’s how this magnificently intriguing but difficult novel ends. Titus Groan, the heir of gormenghast who begins this novel with being born and ends this novel by becoming the 77^th Earl of Gormenghast. That’s as much of a role he is playing so far.

The rest of this novel is being carried by his family and their servants. We meet such peculiar characters, that cannot exist outside this dystopian world where Castle Gormenghast plays the central role. 

I didn’t get much information of how and when and why the situation is as it is and maybe this is explained in the following novels, but in a way it’s part of its charm. Believe it or not, but even without knowing why or having means to compare it with, Titus Groan creates a world that feels nightmarish, even hellish in certain ways and which doesn’t let go until you’ve read the final words. Imagine a world where there are men whose sole purpose in life is scrubbing the filth of the walls in the kitchen, and have this task passed on them through birth right.

“ It had been their privilige on reaching adolescence to discover that, being the sons of their fathers, their careers had been arranged for them and that stretching ahead of them lay their identical lives consisting of an unimaginative if praiseworthy duty.”

The way it is mentioned gives me the idea that however drab their circumstances, they are in fact lucky. That there is even worse.

Forget what you know about logic, because Titus Groan needs its readers to expand their imagination beyond what you thought possible AND believe it could happen. In its pages it has created a dystopian, ritualistic and organized world where impulses from the outside are cut off. Its inhabitants, obligated or not, feel the weight of the castle and its ancestry and are each in their own way affected by the demure nature of having no other purpose than doing what has been told ages ago. And for me, the reader, it has a dreamlike quality because it is not explained why they go through the motions. Why is it important that every day has to be written down to such detail and that these instructions need to be carefully followed?  

The novel seems very precarious in its subject and it’s definitely not a book to read when I’m going to bed, but when it’s quiet and when I can concentrate it’s actually quite a good book. Not like  anything I’ve read so far and for me that’s kind of unusual.

Beside its setting, its characters and its story, Titus Groan is a very beautifully written novel which amazed me with how well it used the English language. It’s a trifle more difficult than other books I’ve written and a decade ago I wouldn’t have been able to continue reading, but even though progress is going slower, it gave me the opportunity to savor the way in which something was said, as much as what it entailed. It’s not a bad thing to be forced to take it slow, instead of rushing through chapters as I tend to do.

With all that I know now, I’m quite sure that it won’t be long before I’ll start in the next Gormenghast novel.