Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake

I'm pretty sure Mervyn Peake is a genius, and I hugely enjoyed this novel, but at the same time, it gave me the feeling as if the entire world was tilting slowly up and down like the deck of a huge ship, and made me feel slightly sick. The style is so indescribably bizarre and grotesque that it's both terrifying and delightful at once. I liked the characters much more than I did in Titus Groan, in that book I found them all impossible to relate to, but in this book, I really loved Fuschia, Titus and Dr. Prunesquallor especially. What I liked best about the book was the fantastic contrast between the grotesqueness of the characters and the very convincing and touching emotions they start exhibiting. They are all so utterly strange that they seem like they shouldn't have emotions, but suddenly the start being courageous, honourable, falling in love, etc. and it's a very odd combination, I've never read anything quite like that before, it's as if caricatures suddenly start behaving like normal people. For some reason, this made tiny isolated incidents in the story stand out, like when Titus eats a piece of paper that has a rude drawing of his headmaster instead of letting him see it, or when the headmaster, Bellgrove, suddenly blows a kiss after his wife, after they have had one of their many bitter, jaded arguments. I can best describe the writing style as Charles Dickens on a lot of good acid, and though it's fascinating and stunning, I'm going to need a long break before I go back for the third novel, this one has tired me out. I'm also literally emotionally exhausted from the roller-coaster this book goes through; it's hilarious, and tragic, and terrifying, and upsetting, and infuriating.