The Glutton
Published on 21. September 2023
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-1-78378-919-1 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
A darkly exuberant novel about one man's insatiable hunger... -- What to read this autumn: 2023's biggest new books * The Guardian * I was only a couple of pages into A.K. Blakemore's The Glutton when I realised that I was, undoubtedly, reading the best book of the year... Blakemore is, undoubtedly, the star of her generation * Big Issue * Strangely wonderful... Blakemore mines the reader's capacity for empathy... An incredibly impressive follow-up to the acclaimed The Manningtree Witches. The Glutton is a delicious novel on hunger and survival that is as original as it is refreshing * Irish Times * The Glutton is remarkable for its beautiful language, for its hallucinatory imagery, and for its ability to mingle these things with the world of 18th-century poor folk... The Glutton is certain to be one of the most remarkable novels of the year * Guardian * Blakemore takes Tarare's life, recorded only in a medical paper, and puts the meat on the bones. But what meat it is. Blood drips from every page as she creates a banquet of gorgeously crafted, unexpected images. You'll find yourself turning them over in your mind for days... * Evening Standard * By turns shocking, sensual and moving, The Glutton is unfailingly original, exploring ideas of class, desire and suffering in a hauntingly memorable story * The Times and Sunday Times * Blakemore is a breathtakingly fine writer... An award-winning poet before turning to fiction, she can conjure with equal force the beauty of the natural world and the deathbed stench of rotting wounds. There are few writers who can be truly likened to Hilary Mantel, but Blakemore is one... Blakemore shares her rare ability to reanimate the past in a way that makes it knowable to us, while remaining true to itself * Observer * 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 Set in revolutionary France, The Glutton...explores poverty, desire and social chaos in thrilling prose * Guardian * Excellent... Blakemore's writing is exceptional, saturated with the viscera of this life... The Glutton also offers beauty with practically every other sentence: not even a roadside thistle escapes a simile. Tarare doesn't know his letters, but Blakemore gives him the yearning inner life of a poet... In Tarare's final moments, both we and the Sister are invited to see not some othered creature of myth, but something of ourselves * Telegraph - 5/5 stars * A baroque triumph to parallel such classics as Rose Tremain's Restoration and Patrick Sueskind's Perfume... Blakemore is an assured writer with imagery to die for * Financial Times * Even in the midst of unpleasantness, The Glutton provides mischievous fun... A rich, human story - a raucous mess where excess is not sinful but defiant, a retaliation against the inequality of a country on the cusp of revolution * Literary Review * One of Blakemore's main accomplishments in this deftly written novel is her depiction of Tarare as a complicated, even contradictory character... Blakemore's sophomore effort is visceral, empathetic and startling in its immediacy * Sunday Business Post * Through Tarare's thrilling travels we witness all the upheaval in a fierce and lyrical tale of desire * Monocle * A full-throttle picaresque... Blakemore puts flesh on the bones of this quasi-mythical figure by showing his escape from a violent, impoverished childhood * Daily Mail * Tarare's story is a breathless picaresque, each new situation quickly revealed as frying pan or fire. His tragedy is to be too trusting, seeing his exploiters as friends. The entire society Blakemore presents is a cruel and grasping one, its resources too scarce to nourish kindness... The Glutton brings Tarare's world to life in all its stink and splendour * The Sunday Times * Blakemore's second novel is a tour de force of sustained, visceral brilliance. Although not for the squeamish, it ultimately rescues a real human being from the caricature that history made of him * Mail on Sunday * A. K. Blakemore is one such author who refuses to slim down her rich use of language and invites us, much like her gluttonous muse, to gorge... Blakemore's revolting bodies are an antidote to modernity's sanitisation. With absurdist humour she invites readers to revel in the muck * Big Issue * A sensory feast that asks us what brutality we are prepared to witness, taste, hear, smell and touch... A compelling, urgent, empathic, beautifully revolting novel that wants to kick the stuffing out of our complacency * TLS * An invigorating take on historical fiction... The Glutton is no moral lesson, but a gripping exploration into the deepest recesses of humankind * New Statesman * [The Glutton is] an exercise in style, capturing the lives of the pre-industrial rustics with woodcut roughness, yet without sacrificing any of their mischief, oddness and variety of daily sensation * Strong Words * This is a compelling but not always easy read... it is utterly convincing. It is definitely not for the faint-hearted or the squeamish * Historical Novels Society * An irresistible picaresque of social upheaval and individual appetite. This is a book joyously in love with language, in all its possibilities * Guardian *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 219 mm
Width: 143 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
450 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78378-919-1 (9781783789191)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
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.