This year marks the 60th anniversary of the publishing of the first part of Mervyn Peake’s Gothic trilogy. Introducing us to the sinister world of Gormenghast, the novel is dense with Peake’s meticulous and evocative detail, creating a tangible other-world for the reader.

We follow various larger-than-life inhabitants of the gloomy castle, the Dickensian-named likes of Swelter, a revoltingly obese and greasy cook; Nanny Slag, a wizened midget who is responsible for the upbringing of the titular Titus, the 77th Earl of Groan, heir to Ghormenghast Castle; the enormous Countess, surrounded by flocks of birds and swarms of white cats, and Steerpike, the Machiavellian youth and anti-hero of the novel. With his rich, poetic writing, Peake creates some of the most vivid characters you’ll meet in literature, as well as placing them in an utterly believable, if intensely odd, world that is governed by ancient ritual and hierarchy and is slowly rotting from the inside, as the central character makes his unscupulous way upward in the Castle’s society.

While the thickness of description can at times be overwhelming, and make getting through this lengthy novel no mean feat, the rewards for the reader in its memorable characters, evocation of place and lingering sense of a dark, slightly disturbing atmosphere, makes the effort thoroughly worthwhile. The Gormenghast trilogy has long been considered a cult classic, and rightly so.

Related posts:

• Human Traces, Sebastian Faulks
• Karen Joy Fowler, ‘The Jane Austen Book Club’
• The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly
• The Secret History - Donna Tartt
• Lionel Shriver, ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’