Book cover meme: Day 5

Day Five is The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake, a sprawling, Gothic tangle of a book, just like the sprawling, Gothic castle in which most of it takes place. Gormenghast is an old ruin, inhabited by the last few remnants of a once much grander community. Their every movement is bound up in carefully catalogued tradition - a terrifying weight of tradition that imprisons everybody. Glorious language and imagery, let down only a little by the third part, which was written when Peake was ill. I recommend it, but I can't claim that it's cheerful!

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