Author(s): A. K. Blakemore

Novel | Historical | Read our reviews!

One man with an insatiable hunger: a novel of desire and destruction in Revolutionary France, based on a true story, from the Desmond Elliott Prize-winning author of The Manningtree Witches.

Sister Perpetue is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient's room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon. Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means.
The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it's not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land.

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Stella's Review:
How dangerous is a sad man? Sister Perpetue is on the night shift. She is under strict instructions to watch the patient, (or is he prisoner shackled to the bed?);—to never let her eyes or mind wander. Yet when he talks, she listens and is caught up in his tale. His horrific story. For is he merely unfortunate or is he a monster? In The Glutton, A.K. Blakemore turns from witches (her previous award-winning novel captured the puritanical fervour of England, 1643) to the infamy of The Great Tarare - The Glutton of Lyon. A man so perverse, so tortured by his insatiable hunger that he will eat anything. The Glutton is a glorious novel. Glorious in its writing; Blakemore paints with her words a world alive with visceral undertakings, both beautiful and appalling. Glorious in its depiction of depravity and desire; the futile attempts to capture love or meaning in a maelstrom of corruption and ignorance. Glorious in its observations of time; this turbulent history of dissatisfaction, desperation, and rebellion. The revolution calls all men to its reckoning, and a boy-man like Tarare turns the heads of more powerful men, — men that will command him to perform and then spit him out like gristle that irritates the tooth. And then there are his fellows who will not claim him — who prefer him a spectacle. For what are they, but curious? Hardened and bored by the grind of their days and the poverty of their hearth and heart. In all this, can Tarare be anything other than the monstrous man with his jaws wide open, his throat slack as he ingests mountains of offal, eats small animals alive, and takes in copious buttons, belts, and other fancies as the crowd demands? Grotesque, exhilarating, and strangely beautiful, Blakemore’s The Glutton is a delectable dish. Gobble it up!

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'An embarrassment of riches. A sensory assault fit to slap any reader awake with its gorgeous glut of baroque prose and wise, poised lessons on life, pleasure, class, desire, and love' - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
'The Glutton contains some of the most striking writing I have read in a very long time. An audacious and humane study of desire, pain and tenderness; a remarkable book about a remarkable subject by a remarkable writer' - Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass
'An extraordinary accomplishment, a truly horrible and truly glorious novel. I devoured it. AK Blakemore's intelligence is tempered by a profound and merciful human compassion, and the tragic making and breaking of Tarare is going to be with me for quite some time. Heartbreaking.'- Annie Garthwaite
'Relentless and shocking, bursting with life in all its thrilling vulgarity, The Glutton will dog your days. Blakemore's history is not to be tiptoed around. Her prose is unstoppable, full of bawdy viscera, singing of the cruelty and seduction of the past... It will have you squirming between sympathy and revulsion, pleasure and pain.' - Alex Hyde
'It's an irresistible subject for fiction and AK Blakemore attacks it with vigour in her second novel The Glutton... The result is a baroque triumph to parallel such classics as Rose Tremain's Restoration and Patrick Sskind's Perfume... Blakemore is an assured writer with imagery to die for... Sensibly, Blakemore keeps that action [of the French Revolution] on the periphery, mentioned in passing or retrospectively, like the insistent beat of a not-too-distant drum... In one of the book's many unforgettable scenes, Tarare and his travelling companions enter a chteau already ransacked by republican marauders. The grime and stains left behind on the exquisite furniture and a massacre of the household's pet doves make for a brutal foreshadowing of France's convulsive stride into modernity. Yet ultimately Blakemore's version of the "Hercules of the Gullet" emphasises most persuasively the yawning chasm between feast and famine, licence and denial' - Financial Times

Author Biography: A. K. Blakemore's debut novel, The Manningtree Witches, won the Desmond Elliott Prize 2021, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and was a Waterstones Book of the Month. She is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Humbert Summer and Fondue, which was awarded the 2019 Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection, and has also translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo. Her poetry and prose has appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry, the Poetry Review and the White Review, among other publications.