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| April 7, 2003 |
The Gormenghast Novels
Mervyn Peake
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Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone. Every other geek on the planet is
reading or rereading Tolkien right now, so just to be contrary I decided
to read Peake. I devoted six solid weeks of my life to this book, and I
still didn't get all the way through the last novel. Somewhere in the
middle there the war happened, and it suddenly became quite hard to
stomach the insular Gormenghast and its twisted denizens. This is not a
story of heroes or of epic battles and alliances, it is more of an
endless self-contained loop, pure murky gothic fantasy. I watched a
little bit of the BBC adaptation when it appeared a few years back. It
was not very successful, but really there was no way it could be. These
books depend on their language for their mood, the words as ponderous and
mazelike as the world they describe. I highly recommend them, but good
luck.
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