Started: 2nd November 2023
Finished: 12th November 2023
Rating: 5/5
If there is one way to draw me to history it is the use of the hidden voice, the ones so smothered by time it takes a certain someone to drag them out and breath life back into them. Like A.K. Blakemore. Yes, the author who revitalised readers’ interests in the witch trials in her debut novel, The Manningtree Witches (2021) has yet again revived a silenced figure from history. This time in France during the rise of The Revolution.
Much like its ghastly cover, Blakemore’s The Glutton (2023) is an outstanding descriptive and sympathetic wonder, not shy to portray the revolution’s disturbing violence.
In this story readers gorge themselves on the life of Tarare, a French peasant burdened with an insatiable eating disorder, no matter the size or quantity, The Hercules of the Gullet would eat from pebbles to babes. Supposedly of course. This is historical fiction after all.
Beginning as a dying confession to a novice in a nunnery, Tarare shares the trials and tribulations of his life, from an outcast child to a sideshow attraction, showing us an individual who might not be the true monster the world make him out to be. In fact, if anything it is the world which is monstrous.
In The Manningtree Witches, Blakemore demonstrated to readers the infectious spread of the witch craze through Essex and yet again with her descriptive words she paints the world as corrupt and downright vile, a chaotic outpour where order is lost and it is everyone for themselves, both revolutionist and royalist. No one is safe from the violence especially the animals, who like Tarare are drowning in this growing movement.
As with Rebecca West from The Mannigtree Witches, Blakemore has a talent for making sympathetic narrators and Tarare is no different. Despite his looks and mannerisms, he symbolises a scrap of goodness remaining in this crazed world. His endless hunger, his attempt to keep goodness alive, compared to his listener, Sister Perpetue, who isn’t entirely saintly herself. That’s not to say all his actions won’t get readers’ stomachs turning. Devoured kittens anyone?
Suffice to say The Glutton does not sugar coat humanity’s dark side, swallowing you up and making you beg for seconds.
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