Titus Groan

‘'Voices that grind at night from lungs of granite. Lungs of blue air and the white lungs of rivers. All voices haunt all moments of all days; all voices fill the crannies of all regions. Voices that he shall hear when he has listened, and when his ear is tuned to Gormenghast; whose voice is endlessness of endlessness. This is the ancient sound that he must follow. The voice of stones heaped up into grey towers, until he dies across the Groan's death-turret. And banners are ripped down from wall and buttress and he is carried to the Tower of Towers and laid among the moulderings of his fathers.''

An earldom of stones and rocks and silence. The land beyond isolated and rejected. Everything is performed to the Lordship's delight. Every poem, every carving, every song. The carvings that are rejected are burned. The honoured carvings are stored away in dusty chambers, never to be seen again. The cooks prepare the meals. The ceremonies carry on, no matter what, day after day, year after year. What is will always be. A new heir is born. Tradition is all. Everyone obeys it. Everyone knows their place.

Yet there is one person who refuses to conform and sets off to doubt, disrupt and destroy the status quo of the Stones. Steerpike. From kitchen boy, victim to Swelter's crimes, to confidant and all-around creator of utter chaos. But his chaos is better than their ‘order'.

‘'This was the darkness she knew of. She breathed it in. It was the late autumn darkness of her memories. There was no taint of those shadows which had oppressed her spirit within the walls of Gormenghast.''

A suffocating place of mystery and secrecy. A palace populated by characters that would easily reserve a place in the nearest asylum of their choice. A land governed by ‘musts' and ugly people who call the beauty horridness. A nest of fools. 

‘'I'd go far from here - to another kind of land,'' said Fuschia, ‘where people who didn't know that I was Lady Fuschia would be surprised when I told them I was; and they would treat me better and be more polite and do some homage sometimes. But I wouldn't stop bringing home my leaves and shining pebbles and fugnesses from the woods, whatever they thought.''

‘'But you're only a girl!'' cried Nannie Slag louder than ever. ‘'You don't matter. You're not going to be anything.''
 Fuschia dislodged the old woman's hand and walked heavily to the window. The rain poured down. It poured down.''

A royal daughter, full of charisma, who has convinced herself she is ugly and stupid. A girl living in a fairytale world because her reality is one of being diminished, disregarded, neglected. Your father has forgotten you. Your mother doesn't even look at you. Only a half-mad old nanny and a strange doctor acknowledge your existence. And when freedom comes through the window, you take it. You'd be truly mad not to. 

‘'I live in the Tower of Flints,'' he cried. ‘'I am the death-owl.''

An Earl who has been drowning in melancholy and sadness. A man of knowledge which puts to no use at all. In love with his books, but unable and unwilling to act and rule for what use is knowledge if you cannot practice what you preach? A Shakespearean figure of utter sorrow. 

‘'Let them touch him. For every hair that's hurt I'll stop aheart. If grace I have when turbulence is over - so be it; and if not- what then?''

A mother that can hardly be called thus. Her Ladyship of birds and cats and loud voices. Yet, her mind is not as idle as one would believe. She senses the change in the air. And she waits for the invisible threat to manifest itself. 

‘'And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears - the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?''

The first volume of one of the most legendary trilogies in World Literature. A dark tale for the autumn and the summer. And the bitter souls.

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7/10