This book was beautiful written. The prose was so poetic and I was really thrusted into this world. While this can be quite a dark story at times from the ways Tarare (main character) is treated or what he’s eating, it was nonetheless entertaining. This book is definitely slow-paced at certain points because of the detailed story telling, but I think it was done well and was worth it. I don’t read a ton of historical fiction but I enjoyed the atmosphere Tarare and his friends were in and it definitely fits the themes of the plot much better in the 1800’s. I really loved this book and will be reading more from A.K Blakemore as well!

Hunger in a time of revolution.

A fantasy feel in some ways to this historical story based on real 'gluttons' who ate ridiculous amounts, ridiculous items.

27-year-old Tarare is watched constantly by Sister Perpetue at his bedside. He is dying. He is also an object of intense fascination and horror - the stories about this young man could hardly be believed. He has eaten rats, offal, even a human child.

As is often the case, the doomed man tells his life story to his watcher. And we come to understand both him and his country somewhat through the telling. As he traverses a poverty-laden childhood, a father-replacement smuggler and life-changing injury, an overwhelming and constant hunger that leads him to discover his slight frame can pack in unbelievable amounts of food. To the doctors puzzled by this, who determine how best to use it for the good of all.

Tarare is both sympathetic and pathetic. I didn't feel I liked him, but I did feel sorry for him. But the evocation of the period is also depressing, dark and brutal, and throwing a naive and helpless young man into that mix did feel cruel. He could not win.

The novel's setting does come alive through this story, it's one you are glad to escape from to somewhere with more hope, more joy. The audiobook occasionally felt a little ploddy, I lost concentration a few times but some scenes will stay with me quite vividly.

Such stories will always be fascinating to us, extremes of human capability mixed in with myth. This may be too violent/distasteful for some. Those who liked Perfume and Les Miserables, this may be for you.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample audio copy.

Weird (and sometimes) wonderful. This is such a bizarre tale of Tarare who has an endless appetite.

In the novel, Tarare has swallowed a fork and lies dying, telling his story to a nun. The narrative switches between the present and what happened in the past to bring him to this point.

Overall, I just wasn't engaged and struggled through to the end.

I've never read AK Blakemore before and I am not a big historical fiction girl, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed The Glutton. Granted, it's absolutely fascinating subject material - the story of Tarare, a man of extraordinary appetite. Tarare was born in pre-revolutionary France and, by all accounts, lived a fascinating life before dying at the age of 27.

Born in a poor rural village, he was cast out by his family and so became a travelling freak - then, in later life, a hapless spy for the Revolution. In The Glutton, he recounts his life on his deathbed to a nun, who is fascinated and repelled by him in equal measure. The story seems stranger than fiction, but never loses sight of the humanity of its protagonist, even after he (allegedly) commits murder. Tarare is a figure of comedy and tragedy in The Glutton - it's a testament to the breadth of research and strength of writing that Blakemore is able to deftly communicate both aspects of the character. He's a character beyond his appetite, never falling intopp caricature, and given texture by Blakemore, who briefly but beautifully depicts his bisexuality as well as his desire to be loved by another.

A real sense of doom hangs over the novel's (mostly poor and hungry) characters. This is driven mostly by the poverty and hunger they all feel - exacerbated even more in our protagonist. Tarare's appetite can only be fed by munching on everything he can get his hands on - over the course of the novel, this includes rotting offal (!!!), live rats (!!!!!!) and, in one deeply horrifying passage, a kitten. It also doesn't shy away from the poverty and filth of Revolutionary era France; it is, on the whole, a fairly disgusting read and a wholly sensory one. But it's not all a horrible sensory experience - Blakemore's prose elevates us away from this squalor often. As Tarare dreams of a better world for himself - one where he finally feels full - we are taken in, too. These few lighter moments deliver much-needed breathing room.

The prose didn't always work for me; it felt desperately overwritten in places, and at times there were dream-like sequences that didn't go anywhere, which prevented the novel from cohereing fully for me. Nevertheless, this is a completely remarkable novel that has stuck in my head for a good while now. In the afterword, Blakemore says that her intent was 'not to present a truth, but offer the most compelling, and therefore believable iteration of a myth.', a goal which she absolutely smashes in this gory, bizarre, but wholly captivating read.

This is a vivid and sensory depiction of revolutionary-era France through the retelling of the life of Tarare, the glutton of the title.

I have seen that I am not the first person to feel echoes of Suskind’s Perfume but they are very different books. The main difference is that for all the instinctive aversion you might have to gluttony - probably the least understandable of the 7 deadly sins - you are likely to sympathise with Tarare.

As the story unfolds, we are presented with a tale of poverty, innocence and naïveté. Whatever horrors life throws at him, Tarare never seems to lose this and this makes him a tragic figure, largely more sinned against than sinner.

However, this isn’t really a book I’d recommend to friends, chiefly because I don’t really understand the moral we’re meant to take from it - and it does feel like a morality tale. It’s interesting without being enjoyable.

One final comment - I have a pretty good vocabulary but still had to check the meaning of a number of words. What is the point of that? Writers surely need to write to be understood, not to prove their own cleverness?

With thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an arc of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

The Manningtree Witches was a brilliant debut, wringing fresh voices and perspectives out of the well-worked history around Matthew Hopkins, the ‘Witchfinder General’ of Civil War Essex. The Glutton cleaves fairly closely to this historical template. For her sophomore effort she takes another figure from a period of revolution, this time 1789 France. Unlike Hopkins, Tarara enjoys no power or charisma, only one singular ability - that of consuming vast quantities of anything edible, or even inedible in one episode where loot from a robbery is hidden where no-one would think to look.

There’s a dual timescale that gives the main narrative a sense of inescapable doom. In the framing story Tarare lies dying in a Paris hospital, believing that a part of the loot, a golden fork, has lodged inside him. A nursing num hears his informal confession, which forms the main narrative. This sees Tarare born into desperate poverty to a single mother in a village near Lyon. His prodigious appetite, a source of anger to those around him, becomes his saviour when he encounters a group of travelling showmen, and he becomes The Great Tarare, demonstrating in public his ability to consume anything from a case of rotten apples to a dead rat.

Tarare becomes, despite this, something of an everyman figure - becoming engaged in a series of adventures before - unbelievably based on truth - becoming a secret courier for the revolutionary army transporting orders - um, inside.

Blakemore’s angle is most clear seen in the two doctors that attend him. One seeks to alleviate his pain and find a way to cure him of this affliction, the other sees him as an opportunity for advancement. Is his appetite a condition or a choice? Lurking under the surface of all this is the horror of where unconstrained appetite might lead - and this provides the climax of the novel.

Though the Glutton is not a story as familiar to British readers as that of the Essex Witches, Blakemore’s novel doesn’t quite pull off the surprises of Blakemore’s debut. Perhaps that’s due to the fact that this time the figure ripped from history is the central character, the eyes through which we see everything, the voice we hear. Hopkins was a character but Rebecca and the Beldam were figures of pure literary invention.

But it’s a fine second album, and never less than engrossing.

Review copy provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I consumed this gorgeous novel gluttonously, gobbling it down in 2 days. Blakemores prose is sublime, playful and fizzing at times, poetic and luscious at others, the beautiful writing carrying the reader through the more grotesque parts effortlessly. Evocative, visceral and fleshly - I could almost smell the stench of the bars, taste the wine, feel tarares hunger. The characters are all immensley well drawn; and Tarare, oh tarare. Blakemore writes him with such empathy, he broke my heart. If anything i’d have liked this to be a little longer - theres a slight disconnect between the cynical witty Tarare at the end of his life and the guileless boy we spend most of the novel with - Blakemore doesnt handhold us, so the reader can determine how he became hardened from where we leave him in the past, but all the same a little more exploration of this wouldnt have gone a miss, if only to spend more time in this beautifully wrought world. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

Grotesquely beguiling, Blakemore crafts the story of Tarare, a young boy who wakes up with an insatiable hunger following a traumatic injury.

Blakemore's prose descriptions were truly evocative and it was clear that a lot of thought and research had gone into creating such believable and captivating landscapes. For better or worse, Blakemore was equally as skilful at conjuring the most stomach-turning descriptions of Tarare's ravenous binges - rats, offal, everyday objects, raw animals - nothing was off the cards and it genuinely turned my appetite while reading for which I must applaud her.

Set during the late eighteenth-century in France, the book makes frequent mention of the Revolution and its consequences, starvation, unrest, vitriol towards the monarchs, and quick references to the Reign of Terror. Upon reading the book's description, I anticipated more of a focus on the Revolution and its connection to Tarare, perhaps drawing some kind of connection between this insatiable, blood-hungry appetite of a peasant boy and the eager desires of a people looking to 'consume' everything in their path, a sort of violence that rebounds back on itself whilst always looking ahead to the next morsel. Indeed, at one point a stray voice even spreads the rumour that Tarare eats himself, leaving a pile of bones on his bed. I did feel that the book lacked a little depth of interaction with the Revolution and its consequences beyond encounters like Tarare's discovery of the abandoned manor house, empty of its aristocratic inhabitants and defaced by other intruders. Considering Tarare's lack of education and experience it is a bit more understandable that he does not engage with politics more but the third-person narration could have made space for it.

Another inconsistency that I found a bit puzzling was the disparity between the Tarare of the initial chapters with Sister Perpetue, and the Tarare of the main body of the novel. The former was sly, almost jaded, where the latter was naive, gentle, quite pathetic. A period of time divides the two which could explain the difference but the juxtaposition was quite startling since there were not many hints as to how this difference came about.

This novel was truly sad and moving, the worst part being that as Tarare progressed my sadness became all the more coloured by my revulsion. By the end, like everyone else, I felt more horror than sympathy, cementing Tarare's loneliness against the world. I admire Blakemore's handling of this steady retreat which was masterful. The handling of Tarare's sexual attractions to men and women, his relationship with his mother, and his wretched exploitation by doctors and political figures were all also written very well despite their brevity.

I am struggling to come up with a clear explanation as to why I didn't entirely love this book although I did enjoy it and would certainly recommend it to people who I think would also appreciate it.

I went in with high hopes for The Glutton, because I loved The Manningtee Witches, and it didn't disappoint. I was so drawn into the story, sympathising with Tarare as his sad story unfolded, despite the crimes he is accused of.

"Perfect and delicious" indeed!

In the skilled hands of A.K. Blakemore the story of Tarare, a boy with endless appetite, comes to vivid, gory life. The Glutton takes us back to the tumultuous time of the French revolution where we meet sweet Tarare, a simple peasant boy who could not foresee the life that awaits him as a novelty act. This novel is based on a real person and the events of his incredible life. A strange subject, to be sure, but one that gripped me entirely as this world, and the turns of fate dealt to Tarare, unfolded before me.

What would you do if you had a ravenous appetite that could not be sated? I doubt anyone would think to make a living by performing bazaar acts of ingesting an array of objects and creatures but that is what happened. Odd, troubling but fascinating, in turns, I felt a magnetic pull to Tarare and his affliction which grew wilder and stranger as the story progressed.

Having been impressed by two novels penned by this marvel of an author, she has added her name to my list of must read writers. The stunning quality of writing had much to do with transforming what might be repulsive into an addiction for the reader. Manningtree Witches had the same elemental pull by dropping the reader into the different time and place allowing the senses to blossom with her words. Not sure I would have chosen to be so sense-aware with Tarare, though, as it clearly was a smelly, disgusting time for all in close proximity, but, one I would not have missed for the world. An excellent, though strange, novel.

The Glutton is a captivating novel following the life of Tarare as he grows up in pre-revolutionary France. Blakemore's writing immerses you into the desperate life of Tarare who leads an existence of ridicule and neglect - born out of wedlock and subject to humiliation at the hands of his peers and his mother's various lovers. As the story unfolds in flashback from his deathbed, Tarare is seen in a sympathetic light which is in contrast to the description of his gluttonies.

Full of unforgettable characters, the life of Tarare and the story of his 'greatness' will live long in the memory.

How good it is to be back in the realm of A. K. Blakemore! It seems to've been such a long time since 'The Manningtree Witches', which was a standout book of 2021 for me.

Based upon the true story of a French peasant of around 1772 (Tarare, the glutton), the facts of whose life were conveyed to the world in an 1804 memoir in a medical journal following the patient's death, the peripatetic adventurings of Blakemore’s protagonist here reminded me of those of Drosselmeier in Gregory Maguire’s ‘Hidensee: a Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker’. The narrative vehicle of prison-cell confession employed in Part One and Part Two of ‘The Glutton’ calls back to ‘The Corset’ by Laura Purcell, whereas the breadth and depth made apparent in the text of Blakemore's historical research into eighteenth-century France has something of the flavour of Nell Stevens’ 2022 masterpiece ‘Briefly, a Delicious Life’. And while other reviewers will doubtless report in greater detail upon the plot and structure of A. K. Blakemore’s new novel, I would like here to extol just a few aspects of her own inimitable style and technique, which are like no other.

Blakemore’s figurative language in ‘The Glutton’ is characterised by inelaborate, yet elegant adjectives: 'diminished grace'; 'fretted silver'; 'pearly wounds'; 'sotted, vaunting farm boys'. And when she calls upon metaphors and similes, they are direct and indisputable: 'old, beaked women'; 'his vertebrae press against the freckled skin of his back like the seam of a bean'; 'the dry peppercorn eyes of a dead rat'. By means of these, coupled with a deceptively effortless language structure composed of short phrases, rhetorical questions and direct address by the author, pauses, repetition, and accumulating lists of three, Blakemore affects a kind of mesmerism upon her reader.

Once mesmerised thus, I found myself ultimately unmade by Blakemore's imagery: 'The rising sun is at his back, shellacking the low cloud in carcinomic pinks and tentative oranges. All around him the trees droop, fetid with the late rain, and the hedgerows fill with lively music: crickets, calling birds.'

Using imagery, Blakemore artfully marries literary substance and literary effect. Whether imagery is there to allure, to impress, to make readers keep reading, or - like here - more skilfully, to bring readers reflexively back to a pictorial expression of the tokens of eating, for example: the mouth, the belly, the substance of food (bean, broth, skin, fat), this is Literary Fiction at its best:

'Saint Jean Baptiste was born of Elizabeth, cousin of the Holy Virgin, Tarare remembers this. The Virgin went to visit with Elizabeth when they were both with child and, greeting one another with a kiss, they felt their swollen bellies quiver with the miracles that the Lord had planted in each of them. Saint Jean knew the Lord was close, even then, the Saviour of mankind curled blind as a bean in amniotic broth, beneath the skin and fat of a virgin girl.'

As stated in the Afterword to the text, Blakemore's intent is 'not to present a truth, but offer the most compelling, and therefore believable iteration of a myth.' I believe, given the few examples I’ve been able to pull out to demonstrate the lure of the text, Blakemore does so. I was certainly transported by ‘The Glutton’. Yet I think the following quote might circumstantiate each and all of the abovementioned language devices that held me in thrall to the novel. Sublime!

'The sky is whitening. The birds begin their fractal chorus, delicate in its thousand component parts: a grass-coloured woodpecker, a lovely blackbird. It would do no good to describe Tarare's pain, which is enormous and in every part of his body, because in pain we are all alone, latched into the flesh, where the blood whistles and cells knit and unknit themselves. To tell you that the pain fills him like a heavy fire all over his young body would be feeble and perhaps ultimately deceitful. To tell you he tries to open his eyes and finds they will not open would be to pick your pockets of a truth you are likely already in possession of and perhaps, wish to forget: that in our suffering, we are all of us totally, irrevocably alone. To describe the vignettes that play out behind his swollen eyes: the screeching of hideous marionettes illuminated by a flat red glare, his mother weeping by the hearth, the robbers counting up their money with frilled whores in their laps, a mere sideshow.'

Blakemore’s reiterative style is drawn to a close in the novel’s final words, pulled from a description of the afterlife given by a spirit manifestation to the Cercle Harmonique: 'All is perfect and delicious'. I’d extend the same nomination to ‘The Glutton’: perfect; delicious. My sincere thanks to Granta Publications for an eARC via NetGalley. (Citations are subject to change. Any errors in transcribing quotes rest with me.)

This was my first A.K. Blakemore novel but it won't be my last. All I can say is that The Glutton is one of my favourite books of the year. A tragic but beautiful tale that I literally couldn't put down and still thinking of and recommending to anyone and everyone.

I would also recommend both the book and audiobook as the narrator was wonderful and really brought the novel to life.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fascinating story, based on real events, and I found it to be really absorbing and leaves you feeling disgust along with pity for the main character whose story is one that needs to be read to be believed!

Set amidst the backdrop of the French Revolution we are introduced to a stunning set of characters, all playing off Tarare who we see under careful watch on his deathbed. There are so many stories and rumours around him that the nuns really don't know what to make of him, and through the POV of the Sisters we see their inquisitive nature explored along with their disbelief about the 'legend' of what this man has done.

The story is then told with a now and then timeline, so we get to see into the past of Tarare and boy does he have a story to tell! It's heartbreaking and shocking and really shows the country being a place of extremes - the wealth of some alongside the poverty of the many. And Tarare has to deal with a brutal childhood but then finds an escape and finds he gets attention by his love of eating... and we're not just talking food! He becomes a showman, people cheering him on to eat a variety of things and he is happy to indulge them!

This was one of those stories that I absolutely raced through as it was so different and the characters were so enthralling! It is gruesome at times but the language used is stunning and it's a tremendous tragic tale!

An intriguing read set in revolutionary France, charting the life of the main character. It contains some really interesting language and I had to resort to the dictionary more than once, which in itself was a pleasure. The story is a times shocking and even gory but somehow the author makes it believable. The back story of the revolution contributes to the almost fantasy feel of the novel. A fascinating read.

The unusual tale of real life French peasant Tarare was stranger than fiction. He was a curious figure that could eat absoloutely anything from immense amounts to disgusting and stomach turning things like rotten entrails. Tarare's life is explored from his birth to his death in 'The Glutton'. I had never heard about Tarare before so I was really interested in the topic and this period in history. The book highlights the poverty and degradation in France during the late sixteenth century. For me personally I struggled with the novel not because of the writing style but the subject matter itself. I found the characters quite repulsive and didn't enjoy the experience of learning intimate details about them. It made me feel quite squeamish which is a testament to the vivid writing style and prose. I felt I wanted to know more about Tarare and why he acted that way, the book did encourage me to learn more about him. I have kept thinking about the book since I finished reading it.

I have to admit I found this book difficult to get into and I put it to one side a couple of times before finding what, for me, was the right time. Make no mistake, this is at times an almost literally sickening read. The descriptions are graphic and stomach churning. But that is testimony to the power of Blakemore’s writing. It’s graphic but the bottom line is that, as far as I can tell, it’s an honest account of the central characters life. Told in flashback, it’s the story of Tarare who is dying. We follow his story from childhood in Lyon to his deathbed. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, it’s a varied and exciting tale. Tarare has an enormous appetite and is a misfit. He becomes a curiosity and his life is shaped by this compulsion.

The writing is amazing and I’m so pleased I persevered ad finished the book. It’s packed with historical detail and it’s bursting with life. It’s dark and thought provoking and a unique and different read. Go for it.

Deeply moving and disturbing in equal measure, there is a visceral nature to A. K. Blakemore's writing that I've rarely seen replicated elsewhere. The fledgling years of the French Republic is the perfect setting for this retelling of the story of poor Tarare, the bottomless man with a truly insatiable appetite, and we are drawn beautifully into the tragic depths of his sad life.

The author leans voraciously into the smells, sounds and sights of the setting, often with deeply unsettling vision. There is such a breadth of human understanding here, perhaps let down only in small parts by the pacing of the story, and I will certainly be looking into more work by this author. Thank you to the publisher for an early reading copy in exchange for an honest review

The Glutton is a novel set around the time of the French Revolution about a young man named Tarare who is afflicted with an insatiable hunger.

I felt such empathy for Tarare, while also experiencing disgust at most of what he ate (which was described in glistening, dripping, disgusting detail). The times were hard and life was violent, miserable and short in many cases, but the story was compelling.

Recommended for lovers of historical fiction with a strong stomach.

This story made me think about one of my cat as he cannot stop eating like Tarare, the boy who can eat everything and will never fell full.
A fascinating, intriguing and well written story that talks about a real character and his time.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine