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.

Superb

I read the Gormenghast triology about a year ago and was delighted to find it in unabridged format on Audible.
The narrator, Robert Whitfield, is one of the best I've heard on Audible (excellent in Don Quixote). If you are a Mervyn Peake fan, you won't find a better download than this.

The absurd can be amusing, but...

Wildly descriptive language, but uniformly absurd to the point of monotony. The characters aren’t very likable; I don’t think the author liked these characters very much. I wanted to like the story, but I found it rather tedious. Narrator does a great job.

Welcome to Gormenghast

I’d often heard Mervyn Peake compared to J. R. R. Tolkien and his Gormenghast Trilogy compared to Lord of the Rings. That comparison works in that both are elaborate fantasy epics written with stunningly beautiful prose. However, that’s really where the comparisons end. Mr. Peake’s story is far more melancholic than anything found in Middle Earth, his outlook on life far more myopic, and his characters far stranger despite all being completely human.

Essentially, this is the story of Gormenghast Castle, a huge gothic labyrinth making up its own cloistered world, and the lives of its inhabitants. I won’t bother describing the plot further than that, because this is more the sort of story you have to experience for yourself. Suffice it to say, I couldn’t put it down.

Also, Simon Vance is absolutely perfect for this novel. Vance already earned his place as one of my favorite narrators from other fantasy books on Audible, but here in particular his voice illuminates Peake’s gorgeous prose. What more can I say? Beyond highly recommended!

Most Remarkable and Unlike anything else

Imagine a story in which the main character is scarcely a year old by its end. In which the most meticulous and well orchestrated fight you have ever read shall take place between a chef and a butler. In which the princess, who in a modern YA piece would miraculously rise above her circumstances and become the heroine character Steerpike thinks she ought to be, and Steerpike our dear would be hot Boi YA heart throb with his mind full of rebellion and "Down with the authority!" and all that, except that he is in every way a craven self-interested creature.
The other great noteworthy thing is that you will ABSOLUTELY remember the name and function of each deliciously absurd character in the Dreary yet resplendent halls of Gormenghast.

Excellent voicing of a timeless tale

So you have to like intense and unusual characters, and be willing to immerse yourself in a dark, gritty, and perplexing fantasy environment. And you have to not just be tolerant of, but be hungry for, the incredible (and lengthy) descriptions of the places and people of Gormenghast. I read these as a kid, and loved them then. So yeah, biased I suppose?

A Brand New Sound

TItus Groan is exquisitely written. Its language is rich and thorough, hovering over the smallest detail or action until it has been rendered as a perfect image in the mind. The characters are vivid, with each person's name perfectly capturing both their role in the endlessly sprawling and decrepit castle of Gormenghast but also in the story. Swelter. Flay. Steerpike. Prunesquallor. They all speak in circles, in riddles, in labyrinths that match the senselessly wending halls of the castle in which they are trapped. They have become so indentured to their daily ceremony that they can no longer relate to other people. Beyond the walls the girl Keda tries to find and understand love for all things, but even outside of Gormenghast there are deadly mazes. This is an absolute classic and I can't wait to continue the series.

madness

this book is crazy, it took me a leg four to six tries to actually get through it, but once I did it was awesome and so well written.

I highly recommend this to anybody who loves writing, fantasy, and being absolutely bewildered

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.