Castles

Jonathan Rhys Myres as Steerpike

in the BBC Mini-Series 'Gormenghast'

I tend to prefer the boulevards and whiskey dens of L.A or the dark woods of Maine for my fiction so the fact that I recently started books set in castles did surprise me a little. Although was reading them concurrently, it was 'Titus Groan', the first of the 'Gormenghast' trilogy that captured my interest. There is nothing inherently wrong with Kafka's 'The Castle' but I think it's surrealism is too soon for me after having had my mind bent out of shape by Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Unconsoled'.

'Titus Groan' is not a conventional book either. It was a mixture of fantasy and history and yet seemed strangely real. It was also a very vivid and picturesque book that I could also visualise in terms of colours: browns, greens, greys and blacks. The prose is grand and flowing, but never pretentious, simply offering perfect descriptions of the archaic building and its inhabitants.
"The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and every cold stone breathed it out. The tortured trees by the dark lake burned and dripped, their leaves snatched by the wind were whirled in wild circles through the towers. The clouds mouldered as they lay coiled, or shifted themselves uneasily upon the stone skyfield, sending up wreathes that drifted through the turrets and swarmed up hidden walls".

I also loved the names of the characters, Lord Sepulchrave, Steerpike and of course Sourdust, the Librarian. They were names I enjoyed reading because they were different from your standard names, either fictional or real life, and they had an air of mystery and darkness about them.

Closer to home and reality, I have also been reading 'This Road is Red', the debut novel by Alison Irvine, who happens to be the wife of one of my friends. The book is essentially a social history of the Red Road Flats in Glasgow, towering behemoths that helped define the skyline of my home town for over 40 years and so in many ways, continuing the theme of castles. The characters are fictional but the stories are based on real events, taken from interviews with many of the real life residents of the flats.

The Carnegie Shortlist now dominates my reading and as I suspected, Marcus Sedgwick is a strong contender with his gothic novel, 'White Crow'. I have now started Theresa Breslin's 'Prisoner of the Inquisition' and whilst it is well written, I don't think it will appeal to most teenagers.