The Gormenghast royal family, the castle's decidedly eccentric staff, and the peasant artisans living around the dreary, crumbling structure make up the cast of characters in these engrossing stories. Peake's command of language and unique style set the tone and shape of an intricate, slow-moving world of ritual and stasis:

"The walls of the vast room which were streaming with calid moisture, were built with gray slabs of stone and were the personal concern of a company of eighteen men known as the 'Grey Scrubbers'.... On every day of the year from three hours before daybreak until about eleven o'clock, when the scaffolding and ladders became a hindrance to the cooks, the Grey Scrubbers fulfilled their hereditary calling."

Peake has been compared to Dickens, Tolkien, and Peacock, but the Gormenghast trilogy is truly unique. Unforgettable characters with names like Steerpike and Prunesquallor make their way through an architecturally stifling world, with lots of dark corners around to dampen any whimsy that might arise. This true classic is a feast of words unlike anything else in the world of fantasy. Those who explore Gormenghast castle will be richly rewarded. --Therese Littleton

Product Description
A doomed lord, an emergent hero, and a dazzling array of bizarre creatures inhabit the magical world of the Gormenghast novels which, along with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, reign as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. At the center of it all is the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom, unless the conniving Steerpike, who is determined to rise above his menial position and control the House of Groan, has his way.

In these extraordinary novels, Peake has created a world where all is like a dream--lush, fantastical, and vivid. Accompanying the text are Peake's own drawings, illustrating the whole assembly of strange and marvelous creatures that inhabit Gormenghast.
Introductory Essays by Anthony Burgess and Quentin Crisp
Twelve critical essays
Fragment of the unpublished novel, Titus Awakes

"Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It is a very, very great work . . . a classic of our age."-- Robertson Davies

"[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."-- C. S. Lewis

"This extravagant epic about a labyrinthine castle populated with conniving Dickensian grotesques is the true fantasy classic of our time."-- The Washington Post Book World

Gormenghast is not a fantasy, but fantastical literature. There are no elves, no magic, no scocery, no mystic religion, and yet Peake renders a dark, complex world that knows no comparison (I resent any comparisons to J.R.R. Tolkien and his drab, dull trilogy). Peake's Gormenghast books are, as another reviewer aptly put it, "experienced," not read. They are not plot-driven or dialogue/character-driven (I may catch flack from Peake fans for this) but are merely experienced - Gormenghast the castle, its intangible qualities, and all the unique characters that revolve around it. And as much description that Peake pours into his depictions of this wondrous place, it is the information that he omits that makes his portraits all the more perplexing and wonderful. Is Gormenghast on Earth? Is there no religion? No military? What is beyond Gormenghast Mountain? Who wrote all those books in the library and from where was the information culled? Where the hell did Steerpike come from?

This is the only book that ever made me cry (information which, as a guy, I impart with reluctance). Not because it was sorrowful (which it is, at times) but because it is so beautiful. And also because its hilarious (the gaggle of bumbling, inept professors had me in tears). Gormenghast was never meant to be a trilogy - Peake succumbed to Parkinson's during Titus Alone - and the thought that the world of Gormenghast followed Peake into the depths of the Earth leaves me feeling as empty as the forgotten halls of Gormenghast castle.

Trivia: The Cure wrote a song based on the novel's character Fuschia called "Drowning Man," on their album "Faith."


Dive in, but mind that last step.   August 15, 2000
 116 out of 124 found this review helpful

The first two Gormenghast novels are unlike any other books I've ever read. They seem to be fantasy, set in a huge crumbling castle and involving a huge, crumbling aristocratic family. But unlike most fantasy, there's no quest -- no saving the princess, no strange journey, not much of a plot to speak of.

It's less reading than pure immersion -- you sink into this castle and its characters, follow them about their daily lives, get to know them and the castle. Peake's prose is intensely visual; he's an eloquent tour guide, pointing out the strange sights and marvels around every corner.

There is a plot, of course, but it moves slowly across the two books, detailing a scheming kitchen boy's rise to power in the decaying monarchy. As I said before, the plot's not the point -- the characters, the atmosphere, the *experience* are what will keep you reading. I've never lived in a book like I did with these.

Unfortunately, the last (and shortest) of the trilogy takes a different tack with much less success. "Titus Alone" follows the heir to the Gormenghast throne as he leaves the castle and ventures into the world. Peake makes two major mistakes: he leaves behind the castle, which is the main character in the previous books, and he focuses on the picaresque plot instead of Titus' character. A little science fiction also creeps in, and seems wildly out of place. "Titus Alone" is just a series of sometimes amusing scenes. They don't develop Titus' character or introduce us to any memorable people -- a stark contrast to the first two novels, which are full of strange and wondrous folk.

The notes in the edition I have say that Peak hadn't finished Titus Alone when he died, and that his estate edited it for publication, so that may explain its inferiority.

My disapointment in the last book, however, doesn't affect my love for the first two. Definitely pick up these books and dive into Peake's strange world -- but mind the shallow water at the end.


The Lure of Gormenghast   January 14, 2000
 66 out of 69 found this review helpful

"Titus Groan" by Mervyn Peake is among the greatest works rendered in the English language. It is a work of fantasy, yet resembles nothing that came before it or since. Although this masterpiece is acknowledged by critics and a coterie of obsessed readers (such as myself), it is, sadly, almost unknown in the United States. It is,perhaps, too British or too eccentric. Gormenghast is an ancient castle, about the size of a city, which, as far as we know, is the only thing on the planet. Having no known point of reference to the world we know gives the novel its characteristic unreality-- its surreal atmosphere. The characters are uniformly grotesque: the taciturn, cadaver-like Mr. Flay, the vulgar and grossly obese Swelter, the slightly deformed yet brilliant villain Steerpike. Titus is the heir to Gormenghast-- the seventy-seventh earl of Groan-- and this is his story (although the first book of three ends with the hero only two years old). The focus is on the visual descriptions, and the world of Gormenghast is vividly shown through Peake's breathtaking command of the language. Peake was a graphic artist by profession and his skill with paint and pencil somehow translates into images that resonate in the reader's mind long after he or she has finished reading. Ultimately, it is impossible to shake the experience of visiting Peake's imaginary world. I read this book for the first time at age 17 (I'm now 42) and have been haunted by it since. Gormenghast is like a nightmare world and no sane person would ever want to live there; yet, how strangely beautiful and compelling it is! Gormenghast draws one back to it time and time again. It is what I call "the lure of Gormenghast." "Titus Groan" and its sequels "Gormenghast" and "Titus Alone" comprise the Gormenghast Trilogy. These books will most likely have to be ordered through Amazon.com or some other service, but the trouble is well worth it. For anyone who loves the English language and its endless possibilities, the Gormenghast Trilogy is exquisitely essential.


original   November 4, 2001
 32 out of 35 found this review helpful

There's nothing else in all of literature quite like the Gormenghast trilogy. A weird, totally original blend of fantasy, gothic, and allegory, with characters out of Dickens by way of Hieronymous Bosch, and looming over it all the mammoth, decaying architecture of Gormenghast, the Groan family castle. The first two books in the series concern the newly born heir, Titus, 77th Earl of Groan, born into an aristocratic family which is completely bound by ancient and inane rules and ceremonies, and the efforts of one rebellious kitchen hand, Steerpike, who is determined to bring the whole artificial edifice, physical and cultural, crumbling to the ground. In the third volume, Titus leaves Gormenghast to seek his fortune in the outside world, a less claustrophobic, but still quite strange and intimidating landscape.

Mervyn Peake was raised in China, where his father was a medical missionary. Coincidentally or not, he was born there in the year (and month) that the child emperor (recall Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Emperor) was overthrown. One can only imagine how bizarre a childhood he must have had, a Christian English boy growing up amidst the poverty of revolutionary China. He returned to England for college, where he studied art and adopted something of a bohemian persona. He joined an artists colony on the Island of Sark, the setting for his novel Mr. Pye. As he began to develop a reputation as an artist, Peake left Sark, in 1935, to become a teacher at Westminster School of Art, where he met his wife, Maeve. World War II broke out just as he began to come into his own, and though he volunteered with the understanding he could be a war artist, he was instead placed in a series of inappropriate jobs until he had a nervous breakdown. He did make it to Germany at the end of the War, arriving at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in time to do sketches of the wraith like survivors and to have the horrors of the place seared into his soul.

He'd begun writing Titus Groan while he was in the army and it was published in 1946. Gormenghast followed in 1950 and both were critically acclaimed. He'd always had an aura of doom about him and was obviously not all that mentally sturdy, but the lingering psychological effects of what he saw in Germany (he returned after the War while the country was still devastated) and a combination of illnesses, including Parkinson's, made his later years quite awful. Titus Alone, the final volume of the trilogy, was published in 1959, his last major work, though he would linger for another ten years.

The allegory of Gormenghast is fairly straightforward, and seems to parallel what Peake had himself witnessed. A once great society rots from within, beset by bureaucracy and senseless ceremony. A servant from the lowest ranks of the society rises up to challenge the established order, but turns out to be more evil than the existing regime. I note--though I doubt it's significant, since I saw it mentioned nowhere else--that you can transpose a few vowels to make the title read "German Ghost." At any rate, it is the case that Peake was in China as it's Empire crumbled, returned to Britain in time to watch it sink after the War, and saw the horrifying aftermath of Nazi Germany's Steerpikean nightmare. In a sense then, Gormenghast tells the story of the Century, of the fall of the upper classes of the old order and their replacement by the even more horrid workers. Though Titus manages to stop Steerpike, he nonetheless abandons Gormenghast to seek a brighter future.

The greatness of Peake's work though does not lie in the story, it instead rests on his accomplishment as a visual storyteller. This is the most painterly form of literature imaginable. It helps that he did illustrations for the books himself, but even without his drawings, the books seem to move from set tableau to set tableau, more like a series of paintings than like a fluid narrative. This great strength of his work is also a significant weakness, because the tale is so two dimensional. With Tolkein, there's such depth to the story--not surprising considering that he created mythology, languages, history, etc. for each of the peoples in the trilogy--that the reader is always conscious of the sense that the teller of the tale could veer off onto any tangent for hundreds of pages without faltering. Gormenghast has more of the feel of a movie set; particular images are brilliantly imagined and realized, but there's nothing behind the image. You never really feel that Peake has given a moment's thought to either the 75th or the 78th Earl of Groan.

This weakness becomes glaring in the third book of the trilogy, Titus Alone, as Peake sends his young hero out on a quest, the purpose of which is unfathomable. Though it does afford the author to end his tale with a nuclear-like holocaust and the admonition that Gormenghast's greatness persists in Titus Groan's mind, should he have the courage to recreate it. Some fans may find the suggestion to be blasphemous, but I think most readers will be well served by just reading the first two books. In fact, in the BBC's fine television production last year, they left out the third volume. Peake's writing is so original and so marvelous that you owe it to yourself to experience it, but the tale is not so compelling that you need pursue it to its very end.

GRADE : B+


The Best Book Ever Written?   January 7, 1997
 31 out of 32 found this review helpful

For sheer, sustained, imaginative power; an unfailing attention to character detail (Dickens' caricatures had none of this realism); a brooding, dark humour that goes deeperthan any other work I can think of against a backdrop of unimaginably stifling rigidity and routine, Gormenghast has not been bettered by anyone in any genre. Full-stop.Titus Groan acts almost as an appetizer for the grandeur of the second in the trilogy. The immensity of the crumbling castle, it's labyrinthine corridors, rooms and even roofs is conveyed by Mervyn Peake with such believability that it's image never leaves you, even years after it's read. Yet it is the goings-on within it's grey walls that leave the greatest impression. I can still see the scheming Steerpike, the sour Fuschia, Swelter the cook, the Prunesquallors and Titus 77th Earl of Groan as clearly as if I'd just met them. One can almost feel the stifling grip the castle holds over Titus as he struggles to break free of the asphyxiating tradition of his home. To even try to convey what this trilogy is about would be trite and pointless. The odd world of Gormenghast has to be experienced. Read them and be changed.