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Titus Awakes: A Novel Hardcover – July 7, 2011
- Print length288 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThe Overlook Press
- Publication dateJuly 7, 2011
- Dimensions5.67 x 1.03 x 8.26 inches
- ISBN-10159020428X
- ISBN-13978-1590204283
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Product details
- Publisher : The Overlook Press; First Edition (July 7, 2011)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 288 pages
- ISBN-10 : 159020428X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1590204283
- Item Weight : 13.9 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.67 x 1.03 x 8.26 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,182,196 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #46,361 in Epic Fantasy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Perhaps I feel some special sympathy with Mervyn Peake who spent early years in China, as much later I was growing up as the son of missionary parents in Thailand when I first read the three books he completed about Titus Groan. Understandably, anyone wishing to return into the glorious detritus of Gormenghast itself may feel disappointed with TITUS AWAKES. However that is not the point of this book. Indeed, to attempt that would dishonor Peake's unique creation--worst of all it would violate the integrity of Titus himself as a living, breathing fictional character of great depth, complexity, and psychological realism.
For Titus that would be a giant-step back into the nightmarish realm of his childhood, in which only the love of his doomed sister Fuschia, the decent Dr. Prune and the loyal Flay redeemed the stultifying horrors of fossilized tradition. With Fuschia and Flay long dead and the good doctor merely kow-towing to Titus's overwhelming mother, he has plentiful reasons never to return. In fact his remarkable yet somewhat monstrous mother is good enough reason for Titus to stay away, if he wishes to attain any degree of self-relization. And he does wish it and he does accomplish it!
Only Maeve Gilmore who worked so closely with her brilliant husband could have picked up the few fragments he left and fashioned anything so lovely and profound as TITUS AWAKES. This extraordinary novel, delivered to me via Amazon on its publication day, does not attempt the Byzantine language of Peake himself, yet it remains utterly true to his relentless flow of plausibly quirky imagery. Likewise I appreciate how the author allows Titus a certain grace of resolution denied her husband. In retrospect the horrors of much of Gormenghast itself were so, well, ghastly--that I'm glad Maeve does not gratuitously punish Titus further.
If the reader willingly surrenders to this novel's beauties and integrity, Titus proceeds further with his life in ways I suspect Peake would approve, as no other "sequel writer" could possibly, responsibly do this. Of course this is also Maeve Gilmore herself processing the unthinkable tragedy of losing her husband at such an early age with what he intended as an ongoing series of books, cut short with his remarkable talents deteriorating. This book must have served as a bit of healing for Maeve, as it does for me.
Personally, I'm immensely grateful for a rich and satisfying closure. When I first read the brief fragment by Peake himself that begins the current novel, that tragedy struck me deeply. With the unexpected recovery of this volume TITUS AWAKES, a remarkable regeneration takes place for those of us who care deeply about Titus himself, as I do. Kudos to the Peake estate for sharing this gem!
Now, Mr. Peake being an unparalleled literary genius, a true wordsmith as few could ever hope to be, nothing Maeve Gilmore could do could possibly begin to fill such immense shoes. The first two Titus books are glorious; the last is decidedly mixed and full of vexations. Gilmore, in leaning more heavily on Titus Alone than Titus Groan or Gormenghast, has made her first error. And yet, with the ending of Titus Alone being what it was, how could she do otherwise? At least she used Peake's title instead of her own, Search Without End.
Gilmore's second difficulty is that her prose style, while not atrocious, is nothing like her husband's. At times the book reads like children's fiction, at other times like a drawing-room social novel, at still others like an inspirational work given as a birthday present to a poorly known acquaintance. Some of Gilmore's writing is strong and beautiful, but some is insipid and even painful, especially in the early chapters. The novel improves dramatically after Titus leaves the soldiers and joins the eccentric artist Ruth Saxon, and stays at a higher level of quality from that point on. Occasionally there will be glimmers of Peake present, but not for long.
Gilmore's third issue is that her worldview is clearly nothing like her husband's. Of course, an artist and wife should not be expected to imitate or duplicate her husband in all matters of the mind and heart, but for a completion of a saga begun by one's dead husband, a little continuity is to be hoped for. There is none. Titus Awakes is very much written by a woman, whereas the other Titus books have a faint whiff of misogyny in them, which rises to rather disconcerting levels in Titus Alone. For Titus to be the monster he is in Titus Alone to then go on to soliloquize about love and vulnerability in Titus Awakes causes some serious whiplash. Gilmore is far less dark and pessimistic overall than her husband, and her introduction of a religious element, however weakly defined, seems out of place.
Completionists, Peake scholars, and a handful of others might like to purchase this first and only novel by Gilmore, but it will please few readers. It well might have been wiser to issue a few dozen presentation copies distributed to friends and family through a vanity press.
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That is not to say that this is a bad book, it has some fine passages. However it is not great literature, and if you imitate you invite comparison.
Peake set himself a problem when he killed off all his most interesting characters by the end of the second book. Without Steerpike, Barquentine, Fuscia and Flay it must have been hard to see how the Castle could sustain another book so the only option was for Titus to leave and find more characters in the world outside to carry the story that his own somewhat un-likeable character was hardly up to. Muzzlehatch filled the bill admirably and I hoped Ruth would do the same in the fourth book. Everything looked hopeful that another great Peake character was about to develop then Titus wandered off again and she was out of the story. The same thing happened to all the characters, even the dog, and one soon realised that these were people that Peake had sketched with no hint of how they would develop, leaving Maeve Gilmore with the choice of trying to guess her husband's intentions (a tall order, to say the least) or simply move Titus on. Her choice of the latter course leaves the reader with a rather unsatisfying sequence of episodes but at least we have a glimpse of some new Peake characters.
I suspect that I am not alone in wishing that Titus had returned to Gormenghast (as the opening fragment suggested he might) to explore the tensions that his experiences in the wide world would undoubtedly generate with the surviving inhabitants.
Buy the book (it is cheap), read it and dream of what might have been!



