A historical novel set during the French Revolution, inspired by a young peasant boy turned showman, said to have been tormented and driven to murder by an all-consuming appetite.
Blakemore paints her subject with the same terrible compassion and searing fury at injustice that she brings to her poetry ... Every sentence is gorgeous. There’s a dark delight here ... Powerful and provocative.
Grisly ... The author brings her powers of language and research to bear on a historical novel that announces from the start that it plans to break the rules. She opens with a description that seems to gestate and eat itself, like an ouroboros ... Visceral ... This is a sensory feast that asks us what brutality we are prepared to witness, taste, hear, smell and touch. While some may find the prose overstuffed, others will relish a compelling, urgent, empathic, beautifully revolting novel that wants to kick the stuffing out of our complacency.
Elements in a minor key provide a counterpoint to the oddness of Tarare’s story and distract us from how Blakemore evades some of the drama and forward motion that the strong opening led us to expect. (We never do get to see him eating a child, though cat-lovers may wish to look away in one scene.) What we get in The Glutton is good – often very good – but sometimes, like Tarare, I wanted more.
