Gormenghast (The Gormenghast Trilogy Book 2)

‘Gormenghast’ announces itself as a sequel with introductory chapters that could be summarized as “Meanwhile, back in Gormenghast” and cues that state “When last we saw Steerpike”. The mood of the castle and the surrounding environs of Gormenghast Mountain are quickly reestablished and we rejoin the world five years after the conclusion of ‘Titus Groan’, in which the two-year old, titular heir of the House of Groan has unceremoniously yet characteristically for his age dropped the ceremonial stone and ivy branch into the surrounding lake of his ceremonial barge.At seven, Titus is no less recalcitrant. There is a surge of rebellion welling up inside of him, struggling to extricate him from the suffocating weight of his hereditary ritual. His mother still expresses non-existent affection or attention to him as the individual person Titus, only regarding him as the 77th Earl of the House of Groan. With the demise of his father in the first novel and an older sister Fuschia, who by a quirk of sex is excluded from inheriting any of the familial titles, all weight and expectation is placed on his shoulders as the only surviving male heir.We are brought up to date with Steerpike’s plans to wreak havoc on the castle. He is now assistant to Barquentine, the Master of Ritual who inherited the position after his father, Sourdust, was burnt to death in the fire years earlier that Steerpike manipulated the mentally stunted Sepulchrave sisters, Cora and Clarice, into starting. He is patient and has been biding his time, which seems to be a necessary approach to anything regarding the glacially paced activities of Gormenghast. He is plotting the demise of Barquentine while romancing Fuschia, another measure requiring immense delicacy as Fuschia is mercurial and difficult to seduce. Fuschia is also, despite her chronological adulthood, still remarkably adolescent in her level of emotional maturity. The only person she loves unconditionally at this point is her younger brother Titus.Much of the first half of the novel is taken up with the activities in the school, centering primarily among the instructors and their headmaster Bellgrove. They are as fussily eccentric, vain and grotesque as the other occupants and much space is devoted to their personal quirks. The doctor Prunesquallor’s sister Irma has determined that that her youth is slipping away and that there’s no time to lose in getting married. She has focused on the faculty of the school, inviting them to an elaborately planned party, at which she will, she feels, subtly audition them as suitors. Headmaster Bellgrove struggles between his natural urges to express emotion and his duties as a figure of authority that merits respect and must not show vulnerability. He focuses on Irma and she is only too happy to be singled out, not necessarily a point of distinction in that she, the hostess, is the only female present. Their courtship on the grounds of the estate is depicted in a comic tone, yet it beautifully dissects the varied emotions each of them are experiencing as they calculate their moves.While this is beautifully written and razor sharp in its psychological depiction, it is a distraction from the primary thread of the story. The courtship grows into an engagement which culminates in a marriage and we see the gradual erosion of romance between them and the increased friction and mutual irritation as each other’s most annoying qualities become more apparent.Peake’s prose is thrilling even when his action is tedious. Here are a few phrases that dance off of the page:“jungle-headed Mr. Splint”Tears are described by one character as “grief’s gravy.”“Death’s icicle impales him now.”“Suddenly he stretched his arms out on either side, the fingers splayed like starfish as though he were wakening them to a kind of hypersentience of tingling life.”By the second half of the novel, when we return to Steerpike’s schemes on one side and Titus’ internal struggles on the other, the novel becomes engaging again. These are the two pivotal characters and their parallel struggles and inevitable conflict with each other provides the spine of the story.Titus is at this point an alienated adolescent and has already skipped class and ridden out into the forest, where he has encountered both the exiled servant, Flay, who has surreptitiously crept into the castle a few times to observe the doings of the site of his former life, and the Thing, a wild girl, his foster sister, daughter of his nursemaid Keva, left to fend for herself as an outcast after the suicide of her mother. The Thing represents freedom to Titus and an invitation to join the world outside of the castle.While Steerpike’s murders and ensuing pursuit has alerted the castle into action and elicited the stony Countess to rise to the occasion of being a leader in a time of crisis, Titus’s frustration has grown to the point where he has summoned the courage to tell his mother that he wants to renounce his earlship and leave Gormenghast for other lands. His mother does not express emotion or surprise but merely says, “There is nowhere else... you will only tread a circle... everything comes to Gormenghast.”The last fifty pages or so are full of action that makes up for the inert quality of much of what has preceded it. While Steerpike is inevitably defeated tragedy strikes elsewhere and Titus is more resolute in his determination to depart. By the conclusion of the novel, the ritualistic monotony of Gormenghast has become literally lifeless and one senses that this change is inevitable. A confluence of factors has precipitated the development but what will continue in the castle can only be imagined because Titus has left for other lands and his adventures will be depicted in the final Titus novel, ‘Titus Alone’.

I have been a voracious reader all my life, enjoying many genres but having an especial fondness for fantasy & sci-fi. I read Titus Groan but am having a really hard time with this second book. I don't understand why this has gotten so many glowing reviews. The language is flowery to an excessive degree. The plot is bogged down by all the extraneous ridiculousness. It's hard to see the point of most of it. I'm feeling as if I wasted my money & am wasting what time I have for reading. Not sure if I'll be able to finish & move on to the 3rd. If you're thinking about purchasing these, I'd suggest checking them out from your local library instead.

I often regret reading/seeing sequels, and often regret that they exist in the first place: Dune. But they often have their merits--The Empire Strikes Back. Even if nothing had followed Star Wars of The Hobbit (or even The Fellowship of the Ring, if you prefer to start from there), they would have stood alone as milestones. Although this book isn't as good as Titus Groan, it's got a lot to recommend it--more fine scene painting and intricate descriptions of movements and thoughts from Peake. Characters and plots brought to fulfillment, which I have mixed feelings about, appreciating mystery and simply leaving things to the imagination as I do. But if this was done all the time, stories would never be told in the first place and I don't begrudge stories from having neat endings.What I found impossible to read in Gormenghast, though, were the interminable descriptions of and interactions between the professors and headmasters of the school, possibly thanks to not having experienced the antique British education system--thank goodness. Other than skimming or skipping those sections wholesale, this is Peake still writing amazingly, for those who appreciate his slow-paced style. There is an air of inevitability about the plot with a lot of tension still thrown in, so I consider it well worth giving a try if you couldn't get enough in the first book. But, by all means, unless you are in love with grotesquerie mixed with aged schoolmasters, don't feel guilty about giving some chapters a pass.

This is one of my all-time favorite novels -- but I lost my old paper copy long ago, and have wanted to re-read it for years. THANKS for giving me the chance to do so without making a trip to the library or bookstore! I'm about to finish it, and have enjoyed no end renewing my old excursions into the dark and gothically gloomy halls of Gormenghast -- and getting re-acquainted with some of the most bizarre, imaginatively developed and memorable characters in all of great literature!BUT, the only reason I gave it a rating of 4 is that -- being a successful professional writer and editor -- I have noticed several instances of typos, spacing issues, misspellings (yes, I know how the Brits spell many words differently) and even what appear to be a few wrong words. Not having a printed copy at hand for comparison purposes, I can't be sure of the latter. I don't know the technical process & editing methods Amazon uses to convert books to digital format for Kindle -- but somehow, some (though relatively few) mistakes are being made. It's not a big problem -- I'll certainly be ordering other books for my miraculous Kindle (LOVE it!) in the future. Most folks probably won't even notice such fairly minor mistakes. But some of the more literarily erudite souls among your customers will certainly find them at least mildly irksome, as I have -- or, at the other extreme, even to be an outrageous disservice to a great author.

Just get it.

Mervyn Peake at his very best. The characters and prose are just wonderful. Should be on all schools curriculums for English Literature to be studied . .

Gormenghast is in my opinion the greatest work of imaginative, original and descriptive fiction I have ever read.It isn't Tolkein, it's nothing like his work. It IS unique. The characters are brilliantly written, bright, mad, dark, and bad; the descriptive passages - which can be whole chapters long - could only have been written by an artist of Peake's ability. The attention to detail will blow your mind.The plot is murderous - literally, with intrigue and betrayal, madness and merciless violence.Heck, Peake went insane himself after writing about it so much.If you're an author - or a wannabe writer - this book will probably have one of two effects on you - or both, but not simultaneously. First it will inspire you; but it can just as easily scare the crap out of you. It did me. But genius is genius. You can't argue with it, fake it or cultivate it. All you can do is admire it.Thank you for reading this review.

Excellent

If you've never read him before the first and this book are highly recommended. so much more than just fantasy

At last three quarters of the book seemed to give no momentum to the story, just dragged out the nonsense world of the castle. The final chapters were good but all in all a long haul.