I'm what could charitably called late to the game on reading this, considering it was first published shortly after WWII. However even the best read people have their gaps. Mervyn Peake happened to be one of mine.
This is the first book in the Gormenghast trilogy. The next two being Gormenghast and Titus Alone (although I did see a fourth book about Titus on Amazon with a co-writer's name - I need to check what the deal is with that)
Gormenghast is a huge castle/kingdom mired in ritual and tradition since time immemorial. The book opens with Flay, the lead servant to lord Sepulchrave Groan, 76th earl of Gormenghast, rushing up to the Hall of Bright Carvings to tell the splendidly named RottCodd about the birth of Titus Groan, new heir to the earldom. We then follow Flay through the winding corridors of the castle and encounter most of the rest of the cast of this sprawling epic, starting with the corpulent chef Swelter and runaway kitchenhand with pretensions to grandeur Steerpike and finishing with the Groans themselves.
It's a marvelous way to introduce us to the characters and the castle. The location is a character all of it's own, slowly rotting away on the inside, much like Lord Sepulchrave. Other memorable characters include Fuschia, the Lord's daughter, the twins Cora and Clarice, his sisters, Nannie Slagg, Fuschia's and Titus' nurse, and the castle doctor Prunesquallor.
As you might be able to tell from those names, the whole thing has a positively Dickensian feel to it, as if old Charlie had decided to write a comic politic thriller in a fantastic setting. The prose takes a fair bit of getting used to. By today's fashions in literary styles, this is padded and over-descriptive. By my personal standards, it's a highly stylised, poetic and an absorbing read (even if there were a couple of moments where I found myself thinking he does go on a bit at times)
Steerpike is a fabulous villain, stalking the corridors of Gormenghast, ingratiating himself into the inner circles of power, manipulating everyone he meets. It's a bit strange that he's 17 at the start of the book and at the end of the book, after 15 months or so have passed, he's still 17, but that's a minor niggle.
Considering that the book is called Titus Groan, Titus barely features. His birth is the trigger for most of the happenings in the book since Steerpike is able to escape the kitchen because Swelter gets so drunk while celebrating the birth. But at the end of the book, he's still only a baby, barely able to stand, and has done very little for himself. It feels like the titles of the first two volumes in the series are the wrong way round to me. Gormenghast would be a better title for this, and I know the opening line of book 2 is "Titus is six", indicating that he's going to take an active role in that book.
Again, that's a minor quibble, as is the fact that Peake calls spiders insects repeatedly in the narrative.
This well and truly deserves its classic status. It's laugh out loud funny in many places. The prose is easy to read if you remove the modern filter from your brain and actually concentrate. Once the story really gets going in the second half of the book, it's almost compulsive.
I will be finishing the series later in the year. This was too good to leave it too long to find out what happens next.
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