Paul Sánchez Keighley's Reviews > Titus Groan

Too often does the fantasy genre feel contented with a good concept at the expense of style. In Titus Groan, Peake's unrelentingly descriptive and asphyxiatingly atmospheric writing is as much a part of the experience as the concept, and one wouldn't be complete without the other. His style is a velvet glove tailored to fit a clammy, cadaverous hand.

This is a perfect example of a book impervious to film adaptation. One can take the story to the big screen, sure, and it might even be great, but the book will remain unaffected, as it offers an experience that goes beyond story.

(In my mind, the perfect film adaptation would be something stylistically akin to Lynch’s Eraserhead: a twitchy, heavy, contained, slightly off-putting and yet utterly magnetic grotesquerie.)

One thing I couldn’t stop thinking is that Gormenghast castle and its environs feel so real. I’m not even sure the concept ‘worldbuilding’ applies here, because everything in this world feels like it was built long ago and we are merely stepping in to visit.

The characters that inhabit this gigantic castle are so lonely and duty-bound by the rigid traditions they adhere to with Talmudic fastidiousness, they hardly know how to express their feelings to one another, and when forced to talk, they do so in nervous tautological outbursts.

With its snail's pace and ridiculously overlong descriptions, this book has no right to be as entertaining as it is. I feel like Peake is getting away with murder, and we the dumbstruck readers acquiesce like rubbernecked voyeurs.