Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

I’ve somehow reached the age of forty-four without, until very recently indeed,  reading a word of the Gormenghast trilogy. I was vaguely aware that it was set in a realm trapped in ossified tradition and that Steerpike is almost the archetype for insidious advancement.

What I’ve found over the last few days has been intoxicating, the literary equivalent to the sort of album you’d describe as a “soundscape”. The prose is thick, meandering, yet intoxicating. There is plenty of humour- indeed, the prose style is a clear influence on both Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett- but it is a dry, mirthless humour. The prose is thick with description, so much so that a novel in which relatively little happens can extend to five hundred pages. It can fairly be said that the novel takes a good while to grow on one, given the meandering style, but, once we get to know the characters and incidents start happening, the novel suddenly becomes difficult to put down, in equal measure because of its delightful gallery of grotesques and the prose which, having seemed impenetrable at the start, becomes intoxicating.

The novel ends with much, clearly, still to happen, but I fear I shall have to acquire the rest of the trilogy in order to continue. For now, however, I’m happy to have absorbed the unique mood of this unique novel.