It is important for readers of this novel to realise that Tarare, the titular 'glutton' was in fact a real person born in France around 1772 as Tarrare. A K Blakemore has created a novel around this character using the medical paper 'Mémoire sur la polyphagie' written by Dr Percy in 1805 as the basis of much of her research. The novel is indeed very well researched and I think Blakemore has created a very believable character in Tarare with great insight into his emotions and understandings. The story line follows Tarare from the night of his birth to the night of his death 27 years later. His life story is a sad one of poverty and abuse but there are lighter moments throughout. The descriptions of French rural life in the late 18th century are superb.
I very much appreciated the writing and the research. However I found the story line very depressing and the book quite difficult to read at times. Tarare is abused by his peers as a child, from whom he is somewhat different in his naivety. He is severely physically abused and actually left for dead by his stepfather. He is then picked up by a group of wandering thieves and sex workers who, realising his boundless appetite, put him to work as a freak show. Tarare volunteers for the revolutionary army, not through any belief in the revolutionary cause but because he realises he will be fed. He ends up in the army hospital where the medical profession abuse him for their own ends and desired glory.
I would have rated this book lower had I not realised that it was based on a real person. It is not a book for the squeamish. Nor is it a book for those seeking further insight into the French revolution. However as I have indicated it is a well written and well researched story of a little known character from late 18th century France.
Thanks to the publisher via Net Galley for a complimentary ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

What an astonishing book. I was caught up by the outstanding use of words, the vocabulary, words I recognised but hadn't seen in a while and words I didn't know and had to look up. The Glutton is drenched in delicious language - a feast for anyone who loves obscure and evocative words and the way they are put together,

The descriptions are beautiful, mesmerising, brilliant but alongside that beauty is horror and disgust and a sordidness reminiscent of Huymans' A Rebours and La Bas, and Suskind's Perfume. Despite the sordidness and ultimate evil of the main character, Tarare, one cannot help but feel sorry for him. Abused, betrayed and exploited by those around him, Tarare eats to satisfy a need, a gaping hole that he will never ever fill. Ultimately, this is a book about love, and its lack.

The Glutton is a treat to read and I am so grateful it came my way.

Not for the faint hearted or the easily offended but get past the rough words and you will find a gem of a book. Skillfully written, and an addictive read.
Based on a true story, set in 18th century France during the revolution. Tarare is a peasant who is truly revolting – excuse the pun. The tale is brilliantly written so that the reader is both enthralled and repulsed simultaneously. You manage to feel sorry for a wretched creature who does and can do despicable acts.
I would definitely recommend if you are looking for a wholly different, gritty and spellbinding read.

DNF @ 32%.

Having read and loved The Manningtree Witches by the author I was looking forward to reading this however it was just not for me. The book is well written and the fact I didn't enjoy it was purely down to taste.

Thanks to Netgalley and Granta for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 2.5 stars

I first off would like to thank NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I really enjoyed the concept of this book, and found it to be a very intriguing idea. Unfortunately it was a book I wasn’t able to get into and so I DNF’ed at 12%. This was due to my own tastes rather than the quality of the book itself!

The Glutton started really strongly for me. The early sections chronicle the life of a late 18th century young French peasant named Tarare. The writer brings his early years to life vividly and draws the reader into the story effectively. Tarare eventually achieves notoriety for his incredible eating feats, against the backdrop of the huge gap between rich and poor at a pivotal moment in French history

I felt the book ran out of steam somewhat in the later sections. Tarare spends much of the book with a group of secondary characters but then just parts from them and we hear very little of their fates, which seemed very odd to me given how big a part they had played.

The writer clearly has talent and I enjoyed the book, whilst finding it a little uneven.

Blake more has a remarkable facility for recreating the settings and times of her stories with verisimilitude that is both beautiful and horrifying, so it isn't surprising that she chooses to explore these concepts and the liminal space between then in her latest story.

We meet Terare, the young son of an unmarried mother whose father was killed the night of his birth. Terare is sensitive and affectionate, two states that make him vulnerable in a life of poverty just before the French Revolution. His capacity for love is turned on it's head when a violent assault leaves him with an insatiable appetite that means he will eat anything in the attempt to satisfy his hunger.

It's a story both sad and horrifying, recreating in vivid detail a time when warring desires upended society and hunger both literal and figurative was a driving force of change and conflict. Blakemore's research is faultless and the work is steeped in it, creating a morality tale about a wonder, a bottomless, rapacious man, that would have been a genre familiar to his contemporaries. But she does this with a subtlety and compassion so that even when Tarare's appetite leads him helplessly to depraved acts he remains human and pitiable.

What an unusual and special book! I had no idea what to expect but very quickly fell head-first into this book and couldnt put it down. The background of revolutionary France, the hospital setting, the character… it all weaves an incredibly atmospheric tale that both shocks, disgusts and garners sympathy. The central character is so complex you don’t know whether to pity him or completely feel for him! A great read!

I love A. K. Blakemore's immersive historical fiction. So well researched, and her prose is exquisite. The Glutton has some quite gruesome scenes and difficult subject matter, but the protagonist, Tarare, is written sympathetically. It's a sad and perfect novel.

The Glutton by A.K Blakemore 🍴

I can’t quite believe my luck but I recently finished reading an advance copy of ‘The Glutton’, and it was a TREAT. I feel like I’ve left a dream and I want to go back.

The glutton is Tarare, a real person who lived 1772-1798. We first meet him, in all his grotesque splendour, chained to a hospital bed on the verge of death. He says his undoing is the fork he’s eaten. He recounts the story of his life to a nurse, Sister Perpetué, who is by turns charmed and repulsed by him.

My degree was in history and French and I wrote a dissertation on the conte de fées. This novel has really caught the vibe. Some of the nature writing put me in mind of one of my favourite short stories of all time, Flaubert’s perfect ‘Un cœur simple’. When Tarare wakes up in the field of long grass with the cow… 💔 So beautiful. Blakemore’s use of language is hypnotising.

It was also a lot of FUN to read this book! There’s often a tongue-in-cheek, playful tone. There’s colloquial speech and sarcasm. The almost slapstick band of misfits on a madcap caper in part II. But then always a sinister edge. Beautiful Antoine with his perfect face and his blackened heart.

Blakemore writes Tarare with affection and compassion. ‘Little birds in the treetops of indeterminate species, I love you’ made me cry (you’ll see). She doesn’t shy away, though, from the appalling or the unfathomable. I wondered whether she was going to let him off the hook with one particularly gruesome incident but she doesn’t. She goes there. The reader has to confront Tarare, and what he is, and how he came to be that way. (Side note: this is the second time Blakemore has done things to fictional cats I had to skim read because I couldn’t deal 🙃).

I read this book over a weekend, lured back to it at every available opportunity, and then thought about it for days. It’s disgusting and beautiful. There’s pain and simple joy. Like life. It’s dazzling ✨

The Glutton is out in September in the UK and available to preorder now. Thank you to Granta for letting me read this early copy of a book I was so looking forward to, I feel very lucky 🥹

Humorous, witty, deeply enjoyable read set in revolutionary France. The tale of a poor young peasant boy who has had it rough from the very start, suffers a head injury at the hands of his mother's lover and subsequently develops a bottomless appetite which turns him into somewhat of a circus freak and ultimately even a monster. Perhaps when described like that it doesn't sound terribly appealing but it is the writing and the characters themselves that make this such a wonderful book. Though the main character is witless and his actions can be disgusting he is still sympathetic as we see him as a creation of years of abuse and his terrible circumstances. A very creative and clever book.

I enjoyed this but it was a bit of long read. Tarare has a bit of a miserable existence after the arrival of his Mum’s new boyfriend. He is attacked and recovers with a ferocious appetite that is never sated. He trudges through and meets many people who don’t understand him as Tarare but as the glutton. It’s a sad story to read; he never seems to find any happiness throughout his short life.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC

This was incredible!

The subject matter was just so interesting that I had to pick it up, and thankfully Blakemore is an excellent writer.
The writing is beautiful and grotesque. I struggled between reading it slowly to take in the beautiful sentences (and because I didn't want it to end), and wanting to read as much as possible because I couldn't put it down.
Anyone who likes Moshfegh or the novel 'Perfume' should definitely give this a go.

Tarare is probably one of the best and most memorable characters I've read in a long time. Blakemore handled every aspect brilliantly, and really shows how good historical fiction can be. I will absolutely be buying a copy when it's out, and recommending it to everyone.
Thanks netgalley!!!!

Most assuredly my sort of book so firstly, thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

For reasons unknown (except perhaps the oddity of Tarare's disposition) it reminded me of Suskind's brilliant Perfume. The reason it reminded me of Candide is probably only because it is set in France (its at least 30 years since I read that particular novella). Either way this felt like a much older novel than it is. Just be assured that it is perfect this way.

I had not heard of Tarare (feel free to Google the correct pronunciation because you'll find at least four different ways). However he is a historical figure and this book is historical fiction. Tarare was supposedly a bottomless pit when it came to food but his peculiarity was that he could eat anything - cutlery, jewellery, dead and live animals (and worse).

The book is almost wholly seen through Tarare's eyes and although it is comically odd in parts it is clear by the end that this is a sad story.

I highly recommend this for fans of literary and historical fiction. The writing is beautiful and the subject bizarre. Well worth a read.

This is a story which defies belief, and is certainly not for the faint hearted. It is supposedly based on a book of eighteenth century France in all its upheavals of unrest and inequality, about a man who develops an unholy and inhuman hunger of epic proportions, feasting on raw meat, infested and maggot ridden offal, and it doesn’t stop there. The hunger becomes somehow separated from him as a person, as we are faced with a boy who is more beast than human. He is taken up by those who would profit by the theatre of horror he presents. Do we the readers accept that such a thing could ever exist? Possibly no, it is preferable to see it as some kind of allegory of what man might be capable of if pushed, the evils of commercialism perhaps or indeed of plain greed, translated into a repellant thing.
I cannot say the writing was bad, although a little baffling at times, we can have no sympathy with our young protagonist certainly and the imagery conjured up will quite unwillingly stay with me, although no,
I cannot believe anyone capable of these extremes of horrible deeds.

My goodness, I don't know quite how to talk about this book as it's so violent, visceral and consequently very memorable but I'm not sure if I can recommend it wholeheartedly because of the nature of the story. It's a gruesome and sad story, a strange mix of a Dickensian tour-de-force of historical invention but with a dark streak through it of details about bodies and medical conditions and just plain poverty. The main character, Tarare, is born into abject poverty and terrible neglect and abuse. He is a strange, enigmatic character who is the victim of his own over-riding characteristic which is his gluttony, his appetite for food and anything remotely edible. There must be some metaphorical meaning to this, I kept thinking, some fable or metaphor here, but the massive amount of detail about bodies and eating takes over and disgust in what you are reading is almost overwhelming at times, so any higher order interpretation seems impossible. I shall be thinking about this sad story for a while, I think, so it's a powerful tale and incredibly based on a true story. Blakemore has brought something impossible to vibrant life so I can see why she took up the challenge of doing that as Tarare is not a natural subject for a novel. It was a challenge at times to read on, but it's a sign that Blakemore made Tarare human that you want to find out about what happens next in his strange, sometimes dream-like story.

Very like ‘The Manningtree Witches’, Blakemore researches the truth about a ‘legend’. This time, of Tarare, a peasant living near Lyon just after The French Revolution. His legendary status is down to his insatiable and indiscriminate appetite; gorging vast quantities of food whenever he can get his teeth into it. Frequently sickening and shocking in its detail, Blakemore once more spares us nothing. Nothing is safe, not babies or kittens and the more tender, the more his pleasure and our discomfort.
But there is real beauty in the writing. The poetic descriptions of the journey through France; the light, the weather, the scenery and the quiet rumination of The Glutton which collides with the horror of his addiction work well to leave us unsettled and troubled about humanity.
Thank you to #NetGalley and #Granta for my pre-release digital download.

The Glutton tells the tale of Tarare, an ever hungry sideshow, a myth of 17th century France, a boy easily bidden and desperate for care. A wordsmith that evokes both revulsion and delight, Blakemore effortlessly builds a compelling image of revolutionary France, in all it's horror and all its glory, and demands that we bear witness to the realities of being a curiosity. Throughout, Blakemore plays with the ideas of beauty and horror, the lines that blur within Tarare between barbarism and humanity with a poeticism and tenderness of spirit that belies the ghoulish acts he engages in. The novel, like the man that inhabits it, begs to consume you.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for access to this ARC.

What a unique and fantastic book!!

A raw and visceral tale following a young man’s journey through revolutionary France. His insatiable appetite earns him the side show name The Great Tarare The Glutton of Lyon.
But he cannot eat enough to fill his never-ending appetite..
It's actually quite a sad story of a damaged boy who can't quite find his salvation..

*A big thank-you to A. K. Blakemaore, Granta Publications, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
My second novel by Ms Blakemore turned out to be as engaging as her debut. The plot, based on true events and including some historic figures set against the last twenty years of the 18th century in France, is intriguing and captivating. Ms Blakemore descibes the French Revolution focusing on its lowest stratum, the peasants and their discontent and again she proves to be the mistress of words. Just like in her previous novel, the words matter most and give the poetic feel to the prose. The novel may seem brutal at times and some descriptions are not easy to read but somehow the characters and the times would not feel real with other convention.