If you're in a mood for a sprawling novel wrapped in grey shadows and filled with characters that won't leave you alone for a long while, come to castle Gormenghast. Its corridors and towers and secret rooms are filled with some of the strangest characters you will ever encounter as a reader. There's a countess who, after giving birth to the heir of the title of the Lord of Gormenghast, The Seventy-Seventh, turns back to tending her flocks of wild birds and requests not to be bothered with the child until he is seven. There's Fuchsia, her daughter, who spends her time up in the secret attic, playing with figments of her imagination. There are bright carvers who live in the shadows of the castle walls and who present their work to the melancholic Seventy-Sixth Lord once every month, for him to choose the best three carvings and burn the rest. There's Flay, Lord's main servant caught in a deadly waiting game with Swelter, the murderous chef from the cavernous kitchens. There's Sourdust, librarian and keeper of bizzare traditions that rule the daily life of the castle. And the castle itself is like another character, enormous, confusing, neglected.
This is not an easy read. The language is rather elaborate and the three books that Mervyn Peake finished before he died (a curse of ambitious authors, announcing that they will write long cycles, it seems) add up to more than a 1000 pages. Characters drift through the dusty corridors and ponder and argue and explore. The plot itself unwinds unhurriedly but it is intriguing and keeps you hooked. The strangeness of names, of places, of events is at times almost overpowering, it's almost like wandering through a half remembered dream. All in all, if you can read your way into the language and have time to curl up with the book undisturbed, it is well worth it.
What's the point of being a reader after all, if you don't challenge yourself every now and again to try something different?
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