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Titus Awakes: A Novel Hardcover – July 7, 2011

3.9 out of 5 stars 154

Maeve Gilmore, Mervyn Peake's widow, wrote Titus Awakes based on those pages left behind by Peake. Titus Awakes picks up the story of Titus, 77th Earl of Groan, as he wanders through the modern world. Fans of the Gormenghast novels will relish this continuation of the world Peake created and of the lives of unforgettable characters from the original novels, including the scheming Steerpike, Titus's sister Fuchsia, and the long-serving Dr. Prunesquallor. Published a century after Peake's birth, this strikingly imaginative novel provides a moving coda to Peake's masterwork.

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About the Author

Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) was a playwright, painter, poet, illustrator, short story writer, and designer of theatrical costumes, as well as a novelist. Among his many books are the celebrated Gormenghast novels, Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone, and the posthumously published Titus Awakes, the lost book of Gormenghast finished by Peake's wife Maeve Gilmore after his death. The Gormenghast novels, as well as Peake's other writings Mr. Pye and Peake's Progress, are all available from The Overlook Press.

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
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 out of 5 stars 154

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
154 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2011
With all due respect to the one other reviewer I see here so far, I feel very differently about this exquisite tome written by the hugely talented Maeve Gilmore to bring the awful interruption of her husband's remarkable career to some closure.

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!
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Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2016
It would be unfair to judge this book against Mervyn Peake's great works. Yet I would recommend this book to any reader who has loved those stories. Initially, Maeve Gilmore's narrative attempts to add to Titus' journey. However, as the story progresses the tale begins to change shape. In the end this isn't simply an addition to the Gormenghast stories. Instead the reader is exposed to an intimate display of the love and respect and loss Maeve Gilmore felt with for her husband. It isn't exactly Gormenghast but I feel privileged to have been allowed to read this book.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2012
Not even close to the power of original trillogy, but Mr Peake's widow does an admirable attempt to continue Titus's journey through life in his style and in tribute to him. Does not have the depth of the originals, but it would be difficult for anyone to match Mr. Peake's masterful works. We are talking about an author who several people I know have avidly read the first two books then been so shocked part way into the third that they could not finish it! It meanders aimlessly, but not with the deliberate planned apparent meanderings of parts of the originals. Some things seems to have no real purpose at all when compared to the originals. However I enjoyed for it what it was and the tribute to a great author so sadly taken from us. The only real disappointment was that it's kinda billed as closure, but there virtually is no closure at all. It deliberately seems to leave the door open for another sequel - which would be a huge mistake.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2016
A great third book in the Gormenghast trilogy, it differs greatly from the narratives in the first two volumes. Titus comes alive as a person, and we get more of a view into his mind.
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2014
The paperback edition of this book from Vintage Books has already gone out of print, despite being published in 2011, and one can see why a few pages into this continuation of the Gormenghast trilogy or (the more politically correct term) 'the Titus books'. Not that the edition is poor; the type is pleasant, the cover is apt, and the introduction is above average. But the contents…oh, those contents…
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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Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2014
I enjoyed this book, but was a little let down. I felt it really didn't flow from the previous Titus books.
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2018
vey good

Top reviews from other countries

Steve T
5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful book expressing the love Maeve had for her husband Mervyn Peake.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2024
A friend introduced me to the world of Gormenghast and Titus Groan. He had read these classics years ago as a teenager. I am in my late sixties and found the almost poetic writing of Mervyn Peake totally mesmerising. I was absorbed into the crumbling vastness of Gormenghast with its abundance of varied characters. I was a little wary of reading Titus Awakes as I couldn't imagine anyone being able to write in the same style as Mervyn Peake. I am so glad that I did as I really felt it was a fitting finale to the saga of Titus Groan. I was left with a comforting feeling at the ending. I would recommend the illustrated complete trilogy version of the original novels. Mervyn Peake was an amazingly talented illustrator and this still can be appreciated on a Kindle.
dorothie22
4.0 out of 5 stars A touching homage, not a continuation
Reviewed in Canada on September 6, 2019
As other reviewers have pointed out, it's better to read this engaging book as a personal homage on the part of Peake's wife to her late husband, and not as some sort of official or unofficial 'continuation' of the adventures of Titus Groan. Gilmore's short novel is rambling, structured as a largely unmotivated series of travels and picaresque encounters. But to get the full picture of the very personal set of real-life circumstances that Gilmore is fictionalizing here, you should read A World Away (1970), her memoir of their marriage and of Peake's tragic decline and demise. In this context, Titus Awakes is an almost unbearably personal mediation on loss -- trying to make sense of the senseless death of a loved one, and the cutting-short of all the creative energy that he embodied.
Meletanmuse
3.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes the Johnsonian drawer should be kept closed.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 12, 2020
This is a book about Titus Groan, a character from another series written by the author’s dead husband, so it is written as a sort of literary legacy, or exorcism. I think probably both. Titus himself was always written about by Mervyn Peake in the third person, so he could feasibly pass him on to his widow to continue the odyssey that starts with the rock blocking the view of Ghormenghast. However here he is lost in a world that lacks any coherence or sympathetic engagement with Titus as the exiled Heir of Groan. He is stripped to a cipher. . There is no Ghormenghast, none of the pantheon of caricatured weirdness that lives there. There are only memories that are not part of any narrative, that appear randomly like LSD flashbacks. This leaves the book bereft of any sense of continuity with the earlier volumes, and Titus feels a borrowed puppet rather than a reanimated character. I can empathise with the sense of loss that clearly motivates this book, and it may have some appeal as a sort of Strindbergian coda to Peake’s darker symphony. So let me say that the best thing about this book is that it reminds us of just how remarkable were the originals.
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.
10 people found this helpful
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Charlie-the-boatbuilder
4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting glimpse of what Peake might have written.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 12, 2013
You might think that this book, like the fourth volume of he Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, redefines the word "trilogy"; it does not. It is the sequel to Titus alone which is itself so different to the first two Gormenghast books that it is better to see the whole work as a pair of two-part novels.
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!
14 people found this helpful
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Mootiecat
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2023
What a lovely story. It brings closure to the saga and, I feel, probably brought closure for Mervy Peake's wife.