Gormenghast

Volume 2 of the Gormenghast Trilogy

By: Mervyn Peake

Narrated by: Robert Whitfield

In Volume 2 of the classic Gormenghast Trilogy, a doomed lord, an emergent hero, and an array of bizarre creatures haunt the world of Gormenghast Castle. This trilogy, along with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, reigns as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. At the center of everything is the 77th Earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom.

In this second volume, Titus comes of age within the walls of Gormenghast Castle and discovers various family intrigues. His twin aunts, Cora and Clarice, have been imprisoned in their own apartments, believing that they alone among the castle inhabitants were free of a hideous disease referred to as "Weasel plague." Titus has discovered secret hiding places in abandoned parts of the castle from which he can watch and learn, unobserved: for he has been "exiled" to grow up with the common children until the age of 15. And so, not feeling connected to his future responsibilities, Titus drifts back and forth between the complicated social world he will grow up to govern, and a world of fantasy and daydream.

©2000 Mervyn Peake (P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"[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)

A “Supernaturally Outlandish” Masterpiece

Gormenghast (1950), the second novel in Mervyn Peake’s classic fantasy trilogy, opens with seven-year-old Titus Groan, the 77th Earl of Gormenghast, already conflicted by rebellious desires to be free from the meaningless ritual and dry duty of the castle and from his role as its figurehead. The novel depicts his maturing into a sensitive and self-aware young man scarred by violence, seasoned by loss, and attracted by the world outside. Into that plot Peake weaves the career of the amoral ex-kitchen boy Steerpike, scheming his way ever deeper into the heart of Gormenghast. And for comic relief, Peake spends (almost too) much time with Professor Bellgrove, his bachelor colleagues, and Irma Prunesquallor, who wants a husband.

There are many memorable set pieces in the novel, like the moment when Titus and his sister Fuchsia discover that they love each other, the “Bachelorette” soiree at the Prunesquallors, the demise of an anile headmaster, the game of marbles in the Lichen Fort, the tracking of a satanic outlaw, the aborted ceremony of the Bright Carvings, the encounter with the wild Thing in the forest cave, the Biblical flooding of the castle, and the schoolboy game featuring a classroom window 100 feet above the ground, a giant plane tree, a pair of polished floor boards, and a gauntlet of slingshots.

Reader Robert Whitfield’s narrator is clear, refined, and sympathetic, and his character voices varied and on target (especially Dr. Prunesquallor, Irma, Bellgrove, Barquentine, Steerpike, and Flay). But his Fuchsia needs more raw passion and less nasal whine and his Countess Gertrude more gravitas and less dowager quaver. And there is an odd glitch whereby about twenty times during the course of the book Whitfield’s sentences jarringly repeat.

Gormenghast resembles Titus Groan, the first novel in the trilogy. Both novels are set in a vividly realized castle world populated by grotesque denizens. Both intoxicate the reader with rich language, baroque detail, painterly description, and blended humor and pathos. Both leave images etched upon the mind’s eye. Both feature long passages of conversation or description punctuated by unpredictable scenes of suspenseful action. Both express themes about the primacy of passion and imagination over reason and calculation and the comforting and stultifying influence of tradition on human lives. Although both novels are “fantasies of manners,” however, Gormenghast is also a romantic comedy, a British school story, a gothic thriller, and a bildungsroman. And it highlights new themes: the conflict between duty and freedom and the transformations, wonders, and absurdities of love and aging.

Finally, Gormenghast, like Titus Groan, is a unique masterpiece that offers a satisfying conclusion to the story arc of the first two novels that perhaps renders the third book, Titus Alone, unnecessary.

As good as writing gets.

Ignore the negative reviews. This is for those who love language and not for watchers of superhero movies. This trilogy is something that stays with you. It is one of the most remarkable things I have encountered in literature.

Great re-read after 50+ years

I first read this as a teenager and now I can understand what I was reading! Peake was an amazing storyteller, but even more, a wonderful writer. His turns of phrase, even in the most harrowing sections, are marvelous.

For some irritating reason, a number of sentences are repeated. It's an annoying glitch that breaks the flow. But the book as a whole isn't affected.

Not just a book - an experience!

I was enthralled by this second book in the trilogy. A lot more happens in this book than in the first, Titus Groan, but the rich detail is still there. The amount of description in this book does not make it in any way boring, because the pace is varied in a masterful way - a long passage may culminate in a sudden moment of laugh-out-loud humor, or the death of a major character can occur in a couple of lines. The reading is beautifully done and the voices of the characters sound just right. I'm hooked.

Dickens in our time

I don't think anyone gets closer to Dickens than Peake when it comes to characters. There is no one who can compare with the way he draws the weird and wonderful world of Gormenghast. His plot is a little thin, mostly, and he is incapable of increasing his pace - even when the tensions and action reaches "fever pitch" the events are captured in slow motion. This is not irritating, but rather amusing and it leaves one more time to wallow in the glorious, graphic, intricate and incomparable writing. This should be required reading for any aspirant author. I have also picked up a new favourite saying, thanks to Dr Prune-Squallor when he sees his rather desperate and sad sister toffed up for a social occasion "by all that convulsive ..." . Looking forward to the last in the series.
The narrator is superb as usual. On a technical level the recording leaves much to be desired. There are several instances where a passage is repeated instead of being edited out - at one point it was about 3 minutes. There are also long silences. This points to a lack of attention to detail but not to the overall enjoyment of the masterpiece.

Good Gormenghast

Peake has been compared to Dickens, but I think his fantastic world is more like what Lewis Carroll's Wonderland might have been like without the presence of the level-headed Alice. This narrator was not to my taste; his interpretation tended toward the burlesque, losing the delicacy of Peake's prose, which to me feels more elusive, --dreamlike or allegorical. The early bits with the professors I found rather tedious, but some of the later passages with the flooded castle were extraordinary. If you liked the first volume as an audiobook (narrator and all), I recommend the sequel. One caveat: the third book doesn't deserve inclusion in the trilogy--it is sadly incoherent--so when you're finished with this book, you've finished with Gormenghast. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Satisfying conclusion to the story in Titus Groan

The same reader, Robert Whitfield, did this unabridged Gormenghast as read the first volume, Titus Groan. His reading is brilliant, in my opinion: this is of course a very difficult book to read well, as it's experimental fiction on the order of Ulysses and it is a form of poetry in prose: note the very careful choice of every word, for the dire, the scary, the unsettling. The plot is vivid and full of action, but could be told in a third the words: but the words are the point. So enjoy them. This book is not about the plot, exciting though that is. It's not about the characters, fascinating though they are. It's about the second-by-second elaborate description of the experience.

There is a production problem that did not occur in Titus Groan: I counted eleven times when the reader repeated whole sentences, having apparently stopped, taken a break, and then went on repeating from the top of the paragraph. Obviously the editor should have edited out the repeats!! Bad production not to bother. It should be done right and reissued. However, it's still a very good rendition and well worth hearing.

The conclusion is highly satisfying and there is no need to go on to the post-mortem third volume cobbled together from notes on the author's desk. I would advise first reading the two works, then listening to them, and finally watching the excellent BBC movie starring John Rhys Meyer as Steerpike. It's a star-studded cast: you will be surprised at the important actors you recognize. They stay very close to the text, though it must have been hard to make, given the spectacular scenery and events.

True mastery of English language. Unreal.

Such magnificent turn of phrase, such a billowing, enormous and unexpected masterpiece. I'm buying the next--the third--at this moment and falling back in. Narrator amazing. In fact, he's the voice of the great castle to me.

Editor

Editor was asleep at the wheel. Repeated sentences annoying. I thought it was my device.

not that good...bad characters and setting

by the end I could barely stand to hear about Titus and how he was growing up and how all these people dying were experiences that shaped him as a man. who cares. Titus sucks. Team Steerpike here. #steerpikedidnothingwrong