📖 Blog Tour ~ Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2024 Longlist

The shortlist will be revealed on 21 March.

 

I am delighted to join the blog tour to share my review

Granta
2023

A subversive 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.

1798, France. Nuns move along the dark corridors of a Versailles hospital where the young Sister Perpetué has been tasked with sitting with the patient who must always be watched. The man, gaunt, with his sallow skin and distended belly, is dying: they say he ate a golden fork, and that it’s killing him from the inside. But that’s not all—he is rumored to have done monstrous things in his attempts to sate an insatiable appetite… an appetite they say tortures him still.

Born in an impoverished village to a widowed young mother, Tarare was once overflowing with quiet affection: for the Baby Jesus and the many Saints, for his mother, for the plants and little creatures in the woods and fields around their house. He spends his days alone, observing the delicate charms of the countryside. But his world is not a gentle one—and soon, life as he knew it is violently upended. Tarare is pitched down a chaotic path through revolutionary France, left to the mercy of strangers, and increasingly, bottomlessly, ravenous.

This exhilarating, disquieting novel paints a richly imagined life for The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon in 18th-century France: a world of desire, hunger and poverty; hope, chaos and survival. As in her cult hit The Manningtree Witches, Blakemore showcases her stunning lyricism and deep compassion for characters pushed to the edge of society in The Glutton, her most unputdownable work yet.

📖 My Review..

In a Versailles hospital Tarare lies unloved, and largely forgotten, with only the young Sister Perpetué for company. That Tarare is dying is not disputed and as we travel along the journey of his past so we begin to see just what has made this man into The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon, and into a monster whose gargantuan appetite would be his downfall. We meet Tarare in the aftermath of Revolutionary France as he recounts his life in dreadful detail to Sister Perpetué, which at times shocks her into silence. From rural France to his life as a soldier, and showman, Tarare is unsparing in sharing the horrors of his life.

Based on the true story of Tarare, the French showman and soldier, who was renown for his unusual eating habits, this is serious historical fiction at its absolute best. At times quite shocking whilst at others gravely serious I followed Tarare as he moved from the small rural village he was named after and into the nightmare which became the French Revolution. His huge and unusual appetite made him the subject of public scrutiny and in doing so he seemed to lose his humanity altogether. 

Elegantly written, with beautifully written prose, which is, at times, so scarily realistic that I had to catch my breath, The Glutton definitely fired my imagination.  I started the story feeling only revulsion for this man who was purported to have eaten all manner of unusual things only to find, by the conclusion to Tarare's story, that he was merely a misunderstood man and not a depraved monster.

About the Author

A. K. Blakemore's debut novel,The Manningtree Witches, won the Desmond Elliott Prize 2021, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and was a Waterstones Book of the Month. She is the author of two full length collections of poetry, Humbert Summer and Fondue, which was awarded the 2019 Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection, and has also translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo. Her poetry and prose has appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry, the Poetry Review and the White Review, among other publications.

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