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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE PEAKE OF CREATIVITY,
By
This review is from: Gormenghast Trilogy (Paperback)
I have been reading some of the more negative reviews of these books and decided it was time to update my remarks. Let me put it this way: Gormenghast, (like the Magic Theater in Hesse's STEPPENWOLF) is NOT for everybody. It is, indeed, just as great as others (including myself) have said. But! If you're a big fan of action--you won't find that here. If your particular bane is a lot of descriptive passages---flee these books as you would the Bird Flu.
HOWEVER: If you're in the mood for a slower read that inundates you with the wonderful power of the English language---then these books are for YOU!!! In THAT sense, this trilogy is perfect. This is the way the Masters USED to do it. Peake uses English the way Virgil used Latin...in other words, he had the vocabulary DOWN, man, and he shows it and there are a lot of loverly sounding (and emotionally evocative) words that we rarely encounter in the works of more modern writers that are, nevertheless, part of our heritage...and you will find a great many of THOSE here. But, as I say, it isn't for everybody. It's for madmen only.Titus Groan (Gormenghast Trilogy)
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Gormenghast Trilogy,
By Goalie35 "Goalie35" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Gormenghast Trilogy (Paperback)
I read this set in 1968 on the advice of a friend who also turned me on to Lord of the Rings that same year. I was never so enthralled with any piece of lit. as with Gormenghast. A reviewer of the time said that it was impossible to actually tell someone else what the story is about, other than to say that it is about itself. I found that to be true, also. Mervyn Peake had an incredible imagination and was as able to create his own world as Tolkien was, although I find Peake's characters to represent a much deeper archetypal sort than Tolkien's do, in a Jungian sense -- in the years since reading The G. Trilogy, I have met a number of the characters in real life . . . a very interesting experience and a testament to Peake's reality-based fantasy and powers of observation. I think he could see people in an archetypal way very clearly. Another interesting note: I was able to read Lord of the Rings multiple times over many years, but each time I tried to pick up the G. Trilogy again, I could never get beyond a few pages. I felt that I knew it so well that I almost had too much of the story memorized. Therefore, in the 42 years since the first read, I have not re-read it! As the other reviewer has stated, if you do not LOVE the English language and what a master poet can do with it, even in prose, don't read Gormenghast. You will hate it. But if you are entraptured with the language (you are probably a poet yourself) and want to be influenced by a master storyteller and imagine-er, begin reading The Gormenghast Trilogy as quickly as possible. It will become a part of who you are for life.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intoxicating,
By Carol Madsen (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gormenghast (Book Two of the Gormenghast Trilogy) (Paperback)
This is a review of Gormenghast, that is, the second part of the Gormenghast trilogy (after Titus Groan, and before Titus Alone).
After a somewhat slow beginning, in which Mervyn Peake first briefly summarizes Titus Grown by drawing up a list of which characters have died or gone missing, then introduces the reader with the plethora of new characters that are the teachers of Titus, the now seven-year-old seventy-seventh Earl of Gormenghast, the pace hopefully picks up again. And as the pages turn, the story becomes more and more exciting. Irma Prunesquallor's party, and then her romance and the way the whole affair eventually backfires on Wellgrove, although it does not push the plot further, were fun to read. Titus's growing love for his sister Fuchsia, and at the same time his attempts at shunning both the physical prison that is Gormenghast castle and the mental cage that is its sacrosanct ritual, attempts that lead him into the mysterious forest where lurks the Thing, and to the grotto where Flay has taken shelter, were passionating. Finally, Steerpike's mischievious, murderous ambition, and the others' suspicions that gradually turn into evidences, and the memorable chases in the shadowy maze of the fortress that ensue, were purely mind-boggling. Mervyn Peake's characters are so complex that in the end you like the ones you despised and hate the ones you loved in the first book. His words give life to such an amazing imagery, it vibrates and dazzles, it's intoxicating. This is magic.
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