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.
Sensuous detail ... The novel is a skilfully executed balancing act. We are revolted by Tarare but, like the nun, find plenty to pity in his tale. The language is a marvel. Blakemore’s skill as a poet is everywhere.
Remarkable for its beautiful language ... Blakemore clearly knows the revolutionary period, and sees it from an unexpected angle ... Not a flawless novel ... The character of Tarare never quite coheres ... The plot and tone can also be unstable. Characters do extreme things without explanation ... However, The Glutton’s weakest passages are more interesting than most novels’ strongest ones.
Blakemore is a breathtakingly fine writer, with an assurance and verve that make it hard to believe this is only her second novel ... lakemore shares her rare ability to reanimate the past in a way that makes it knowable to us, while remaining true to itself.
Blakemore walks a fine, brilliant narrative line, establishing Tarare’s infamy in his lifetime, then moving forward with a story that’s simultaneously sympathetic to the character and unflinching in its depiction of how far he’s willing to go in an attempt to sate himself ... A stunning, mesmeric novel of uncommon power.
