Titus Groan

Volume 1 of the Gormenghast Trilogy

By: Mervyn Peake

Narrated by: Simon Vance

In Volume 1 of the classic Gormenghast Trilogy, a doomed lord, an emergent hero, and an array of bizarre creatures haunt the world of Gormenghast Castle. This trilogy, along with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, reigns as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. At the center of everything is the 77th Earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom.

In this first volume, the Gormenghast Castle, and the noble family who inhabits it, are introduced, along with the infant firstborn son of the Lord and Countess. Titus Groan is sent away to be raised by a wet nurse, with only a gold ring from his mother, and ordered to not be brought back until the age of six. By his christening, he learns from his much older sisters that epileptic fits are "common at his age." He also learns that they don't like his mother. And then, he is crowned, and called, "Child-inheritor of the rivers, of the Tower of Flints and the dark recesses beneath cold stairways and the sunny summer lawns. Child-inheritor of the spring breeze that blow in from the jarl forests and of the autumn misery in petal, scale, and wing. Winter's white brilliance on a thousand turrets and summer's torpor among walls that crumble..."

In these extraordinary novels, Peake has created a world where all is like a dream - lush, fantastical, vivid; a symbol of dark struggle.

©1967 Mervyn Peake (P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience." (C.S. Lewis)

It's a classic

This book, to me, is a classic; a work of genius. I read the whole trilogy in my college years and decided to listen to Vol 1 a few months ago. It made an impression on me the first time and I was not disappointed this time. The contrast between the grimness of the world that Mervyn Peake has created and the lushness of the imagery and language with which he describes it make it unique. The denizens of this weird world have the most wonderful names. How can you not revel in characters whose names are Flay, Steerpike, Prunesquallor, and Swelter? Not to mention Groan. Simon Vance enhances the experience by bringing both the characters and the text to vibrant life. Ordinarily a world so ugly, claustrophobic, and grim would not be my cup of tea, but yet again I found it irresistible.

One of the best performances I have heard

Simon Vance did an excellent job. This is not an easy book to read yet his voice, his pace, his tone made it justice. It is mesmerizing, both the story and the narration are excellent.

Count Me Among the Peake Fans

As others have noted, Peake is often spoken of in the same breath as Tolkein. They are undoubtedly two of the greatest English fantasy novelists of the twentieth century. But rather than thinking of Peake as similar to Tolkein, it's perhaps best to think of him as the anti-Tolkein. Both Peake and Tolkein are great at what they do, but they're up to rather different things. If The Lord of the Rings is a basically celebratory series that focuses on plot, Peake's Gormenghast books (not, by design, a trilogy, but the first three books of a longer series cut short by Peake's untimely death) are deeply cynical and are about character and, above all, setting. While Tolkein's world is full of magic, monsters, and a variety of non-human races, Peake's is largely without all these things.

I'm a longtime Tolkein fan who is now also a Peake fan. Plenty of people appreciate the qualities of both authors. But others love one and detest the other. For example, the great British novelist Michael Moorcock is a proponent of Peake and a detractor of Tolkein.

At any rate, this book is a classic that deserves a listen by those prepared for something un-Middle Earth-y. And Robert Whitfield's reading is truly outstanding, as he effectively brings to life the many characters who populate Peake's book.

One of the Best

Early in my audible membership i bought this book (as well as Gormenghast and Titus Alone) and i was hooked. Mervyn Peake was an amazing writer and the details of the novels kept me attentive thru all 45 hours of them. Robert Whitfield is a great reader and i've since purchased other books from audible just because he was the reader.

Great!!

Part 1 really set the story up nicely. I loved the characters, weird as they are, and the narrator was perfect with a range of voices for each character. I would refer this to anyone who loves a good book along the lines of a cross between dark gothic and poetic fantasy.

Remarkable

This book is an explosion of beautiful language and iridescent creativity. The characters are strange and fascinating. They manage to be both a Bizzarre and human at the same time. This is now one of my favorites!

for those who love turns of phrase and Simon Vance

This one is tricky. I like it, I do. I couldn't tell you what actually happens in the story because I am still not sure. The language is glorious. If you enjoyed the language for its own sake in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I bet you would like the language in this.

In a fit of enthusiasm for that very idea I tried listening to The Three Musketeers
and Ivanhoe. Not so much, the language in those didn't draw me in. It was too stiff and put me off.

The problem here, and it IS a problem for me... super lengthy descriptions of every little thing, every thought, every expression, every everything, goes on and on and on and on. You can listen for two hours and its still the same scene in which nothing of note has happened. The rub is, I keep thinking maybe something did happen and I missed it because I was happily lost in some enchanting phrase. It is DELIGHTFULLY irritating. So I will keep playing it over and over until I am sure I have it. Even if it turns out I hate the story I will have gotten more than my money's worth.

Simon Vance is always perfect. He is the only actor of many books who has never ever let me down.

Didn't Quite Groa(n) on Me

Any additional comments?

This book had been on the fringes of my to-read list for almost 35 years. I question some of the other readers who want it to be a Lord of the Rings-type experience. It isn't, and that's mostly because its star is a place -- the castle in its ruin -- more than a character. That said, though, it's hard to dispute that not enough happens here. Just as the castle is in ruin, so is the ambition of the characters collectively. Everything slides toward decay. I could live with that if we continued to discover new elements of the castle, new evidence of spent and abandoned dreams, but the action focuses increasingly on characters who've lost or never quite been able to grasp those dreams.

The canvas is broad and beautifully grey, but the narrative is often too much expository, too much a reporting of things that happened before. The result is a sense that we're missing the brightest part of this weirdly magical place.

Great voice characterisations, a touch too fast

I love this story. The imagery is amazing. Overall, the narration is very good.
The narrator spoke clearly and gave each character his/her own voice. However, the speed at which he read the descriptive passages did not do justice to the rich imagery. It was almost as if he thought he needed to gloss over them to get to the dialogue.

Fantasy isn't just a genre

Both the writing and reading of this classic set the standard for the literature of fantasy. Simply marvelous.