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A review by theogb451
Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake
2.0
This book felt like it had more in common with absurd/surrealist works than a conventional story. In fact The Third Policeman was my first comparison as I read. I don't feel like the intent was to make the entire tale feel as a dream but the narrative is quite incoherent at times, introducing so much change from what we saw in the first two Gormenghast books alongside new characters, that I was half expecting to discover it all was a fever dream.
Despite being the title character, Titus mostly feels like a side character. On the few occasions he is actually the protagonist he is mostly filled with anger and sadness, pushing away everyone he meets and crying about needing to go elsewhere and be alone. Otherwise he manages to twice collapse (actually, was it three times?!) and be brought back to health from feverish dreams.
While the first two volumes felt firmly placed in some sort of early 19th Century version of the world, based on the clothes, the existence of guns but the lack of any other technology, the sprawling huge city and surrounds that Titus finds himself in is in a science fiction world, containing modern items like cars, helicopters, artificial light and factories, but including strange flying vehicles and tracking equipment, and even what seemed like androids.
One improvement is there are some normal seeming female characters. In fact no one is really a grotesque here, the people seem quite contemporary, although there is still the strange matter of how personal relationships unfold, which is part of the incoherence for me: it seems no woman can meet Titus and not fall immediately in love with him, while he rejects all, and so we have these strange interactions of huge passions that have no obvious basis. Friendships are the same: Titus and Muzzlehatch exchange only angry words with each other but consider themselves to be great friends. The problem of course is that it's hard to really feel any emotional connection to these relationships when they come out of nowhere, even if the individual characters are interesting to read.
Thematically I feel WW2 must have cast its shadow here: this book very firmly places the scientists as the enemy. The things they create are clearly bad and they are trying (for reasons that aren't really clear) to track and get hold of Titus. Presumably the shadow of nuclear weapons hung heavy on Peake and he was distrustful of the atomic age. There is also a sense of hatred of bureaucracy. Obviously Titus going against his routine had a part of that already, but here the authority is governmental: Titus is considered a vagrant for having no good papers.
There were several moments where I considered giving up, points of tedium with characters who appeared from nowhere or long multi-paragraph descriptions of what it's like to remember something (!), but then a new part would pop up that was impressively creepy or tense and I would keep going on. Overall I'm giving it two stars but it's a bit of a toss up between that and three.
Despite being the title character, Titus mostly feels like a side character. On the few occasions he is actually the protagonist he is mostly filled with anger and sadness, pushing away everyone he meets and crying about needing to go elsewhere and be alone. Otherwise he manages to twice collapse (actually, was it three times?!) and be brought back to health from feverish dreams.
While the first two volumes felt firmly placed in some sort of early 19th Century version of the world, based on the clothes, the existence of guns but the lack of any other technology, the sprawling huge city and surrounds that Titus finds himself in is in a science fiction world, containing modern items like cars, helicopters, artificial light and factories, but including strange flying vehicles and tracking equipment, and even what seemed like androids.
One improvement is there are some normal seeming female characters. In fact no one is really a grotesque here, the people seem quite contemporary, although there is still the strange matter of how personal relationships unfold, which is part of the incoherence for me: it seems no woman can meet Titus and not fall immediately in love with him, while he rejects all, and so we have these strange interactions of huge passions that have no obvious basis. Friendships are the same: Titus and Muzzlehatch exchange only angry words with each other but consider themselves to be great friends. The problem of course is that it's hard to really feel any emotional connection to these relationships when they come out of nowhere, even if the individual characters are interesting to read.
Thematically I feel WW2 must have cast its shadow here: this book very firmly places the scientists as the enemy. The things they create are clearly bad and they are trying (for reasons that aren't really clear) to track and get hold of Titus. Presumably the shadow of nuclear weapons hung heavy on Peake and he was distrustful of the atomic age. There is also a sense of hatred of bureaucracy. Obviously Titus going against his routine had a part of that already, but here the authority is governmental: Titus is considered a vagrant for having no good papers.
There were several moments where I considered giving up, points of tedium with characters who appeared from nowhere or long multi-paragraph descriptions of what it's like to remember something (!), but then a new part would pop up that was impressively creepy or tense and I would keep going on. Overall I'm giving it two stars but it's a bit of a toss up between that and three.