Titus Awakes

Written by Maeve Gilmore and Mervyn Peake

Narrated by Rupert Degas

Titus Awakes is the fourth and last novel in the Gormenghast series and was finished by Peake’s widow, Maeve Gilmore. In this last novel, Titus has left the world of Gormenghast behind, but he remains haunted by memories of his former life. Journeying from snow-covered mountains to archipelagos strewn with coral reefs, he awakens his senses but fails to conquer his aching sense of solitude. A mesmerising novel, Titus Awakes celebrates and mourns both the passing of Gormenghast Castle and the life of its creator.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
• Release date: Sep 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781843795728

Reviews for Titus Awakes

[amanda4242_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When Mervyn Peake died he left behind a handful of notes for a fourth Gormenghast work, which his widow used as the inspiration for this novel.Left wounded and alone at the end of the third novel, Gilmore takes Titus from a world of darkness and pain and leads him to a place of peace. It is not the book Peake would have written, but Gilmore's love for her husband and his creation are evident in every line she wrote. Titus Awakes serves as a satisfactory end to Titus's journey.

[kittycunningh-815148 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This fit the rest of the Gormenghast series.

[thenwhathappened · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Not authored by Mervyn Peake, but by his widow. The distinction needs to be made, because it's not Peake. Not close. It's pretty horrible and it should never have been published.

[havingfaith-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was determined to like Titus Awakes when I bought it but, and it’s painful to say this, I was disappointed.The background to this novel is that Mervyn Peake is descriptive literature’s version of God, the best gothic writer of all time. He doesn’t get compared to other authors; they get compared to him. A library without Peake would be like a Japanese silk print that’s missing Mount Fuji. No one comes close, or will. Like all great artists, he had his tragically mad side too but we have to accept that because it’s often the source of astounding creativity; and it was. Peake died in 1968 and apparently left a “fragment” of the final instalment in the Gormenghast series; a couple of pages. Like any objective and stern book critic who gets everything in steady perspective, I could lick the pages of the first three volumes of Gormenghast because it’s that tragically magnificent. The mind on this writer-artist must have been a beacon calling out from the surface of the Earth.Years later, Maeve Gilmore retrieved the “fragment” about Titus Groan (who went a-wandering in book 3) and filled out the rest of the narrative on Mervyn Peake’s behalf. To state the undeniable, Maeve Gilmore isn’t Mervyn Peake – the job had already been taken.I don’t understand why she had to bring this gothic realm out of the shadowy Dark Age in which the castle had been circling for a millennium, time immemorial, and push it into the comparative modernity of the Jazz Age and early motor cars. Is that supposed to be a metaphor for something?Then there’s Titus’s women, the stray wastrel he discovers in the countryside and then the suburban artist (the kind of character the author models on themselves – who knows? I’m not going to ask her). I think these two have been designed to be ‘grotesques’, Peake’s speciality (Swelter, Prunesquallor, The Countess), although they don’t quite work. They’re not conveying life in its rude and ugly perfection, uniqueness of character and from a societal tradition that’s ingrained and inbred into the formation of their very bones, nurturing them into weird and shocking, aching shapes in both their landscaped reality and the reader’s mind.The author tried to achieve that in these characters but they were just, you know, people. This was just, you know, a book. Nothing special then. Did I expect the finest hallmarks could be replicated? Why did I hope it was more than clinging onto a commercial bandwagon by the fingertips of credibility? Am I unfair and should I be comparing it to other books in this category and not against the very best, the highest tier of world-class fiction? Perhaps, but I also have a duty to my expectations and to the followers of the original author who come to this book after me because she’s attached it deliberately to his legacy and beckoned the audience using that hook.No, Peake’s gone and there will be nothing more to come at that level of quality. I could cry. This is a bereavement.

[jonarnold_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The best thing about Peake’s widow finishing off his notes for a planned fourth volume is the balance it provides to the original trilogy – Titus Alone now no longer feels like a bitty appendage to the meaty epic of the first books of the series. It’s also clearly a cathartic exercise for her, with what seems to be an avatar of Peake making a small but vital appearance at a key moment. It also provides a sense of closure to Titus’ wanderingsIt’s a slight story in itself though, and hard as Gilmore works, her prose is distinctly different from her husband, less detailed and evocative. It also suffers the same problem as Titus Alone, being bitty and episodic in nature. The story’s really of Titus’ growing maturity, but the various incidents don’t seem to build that, sudden lurches changing his character rather than smoothly building. Arguably that’s more realistic than a literary treatment, but it doesn’t really satisfy. As a cathartic work it’s fascinating, but as a book too bitty and slight to be truly memorable.

[cmolisani_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While I longed to return to the corridors of Gormenghast Castle in Titus Awakes this book was not written for me. Maeve lacks the same punch her husband gave in the first three books, though there are memorable characters these are no Steerpikes, Flays or Prunesquallors; but her passages describing what she and her husband went through during his illness were just as moving as anything Peake wrote. Though it was not the story I hoped to read it was still a wonderful read and it was nice to have some sort of closure for the wandering Titus.

[cedartree_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved the Gormenghast novels and this was a little different. It is a more personal journey. I highly suggest reading the introduction. As it explains what you are really reading. Really this is Maeve Gilmore's working out of her grief and as such it is a deeply touching read. And one that I'm glad I read at this time.