Ballooning abdomen
Flay and Swelter, pitched in a life and death struggle, are at physically opposite extremes - Flay, wiry, knobbly, skinny,...
Like a wound…
A stunningly original depiction of the pink streaks of dawn resembling a sky-wound.
'... as the dawn...
Gulch it down
Mervyn Peake uses Rabelaisian vocabulary to describe the gargantuan appetites and appearance of Swelter, the castle cook in his Gormenghast...
Heron-like paces
I love the idea of a human walk embodying the fastidious strut of the heron's dainty stride.
'He strode to...
On illusory madness
A fine description of Mervyn Peake's balance between bounding imagination and taut writing, rounded off with a vintage metaphor.
...
A gardener to the roots
This gardener, who tends the castle grounds of the monstrous pile of Gormenghast, is driven by something more than the...
Slit-pupilled eyes
The Countess lives in a sea of white cats who hang upon her every word, here looking up at her...
Rain-thrashed pools
Gormenghast is made for storms and this one allows Steerpike to further insinuate himself into the life of the castle....
As huge as …
Mervyn Peake is a fount of original similes and metaphors. Given the granite-gothic ambiance of Gormenghast, it makes sense that...
Good strong tea
A novel way to signal strong tea, its being so solid that it can support a mouse's weight. The more...
A rolling boulder
Nanny Slagg meets an old man of the Dwellers, the humble people who live limpet-like on the outer walls of...
Wedge-headed man
Trying to imagine the angle of the wedge! Was it a heavy-jawed man with a pointed head, or one with...
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