Book Review: "The Glutton" by A.K Blakemore

“I am lost on a sea of hunger, blue and black and heaving and full five fathoms deep below and rarely, rarely do I feel anything besides hungry, rarely, rarely does a jolt of feeling or emotion pierce the hide of my hunger, and never, never have I been able to live the life God presumably gave me to live, to dance and think and remember and kiss, no, all my life I have stood at the threshold of my life waiting to be let in”

- The Glutton by A.K Blakemore

When I read The Manningtree Witches I have to say I found it fairly average. I wasn't really planning on reading anymore by this author until I came across The Glutton. An ambitous novel set over the course of some years with what I understood to be a changing calendar type, A.K Blakemore has really become solidified as an author who is not afraid to go all out. When I started reading The Glutton, the one thing I became enamoured with is the way in which it switches between two timelines, looking at how the character has changed and leaving the reader to find out why. It is a fantastic achievement of a book.

The Glutton is a fictionalised account of a real person from the 18th century named Tarare, known as the man with the bottomless appetite. It starts off with one of the Sisters from the church visiting Tarare on his deathbed, helping him around whilst he tells her his story, which is where we are taken back into the other timeline. On his deathbed, Tarare is said to have swallowed a golden fork which is now causing him great pain and may be the reason he is going to die.

Whilst his childhood seems happy enough, it is thrown into disarray when the French Revolution breaks out. His appetite increases as he meets new and shady strangers during his late teens. Dark and grotesque, Tarare's life is filled with odd encounters, strange people and then there is his insatiability which is even more disturbing. As the book moves on, we get this sense that something is deeply wrong here and that Tarare is getting himself into deep trouble.

One part of the book I thought was especially odd was the fact that on his deathbed, he was preoccupied with the fact that when he dies he will be cut open to see what is wrong with him exactly. He seems not to want to be cut open, but then again he seems to be very interested in it himself almost morbidly so. When he recounts this to the woman (Sister Perpetúe), there is a deep sadness in him about it, but there is also a morbid chuckle that comes from him every time he completely repulses the nun.

This book at first tries to make us disgusted with Tarare and so, as we are invited into his story, we find out we are more sympathetic to his state. He is a monster that has been made into the way he is through circumstance, not born the way he is. He was happy once. He was once in a stable household but then, everything changed for him. There is this scene when he meets two strangers at about sixteen and they give him food, but he is still hungry but tries not to say so. It is definitely the start of something much worse to come, but you don't fully realise it at the time. It creeps up on you whilst you are also trying to navigate the character and his timelines.

In conclusion, I found this book to be incredibly intricately written. The writer has definitely paid attention to the differences between the character from when he is younger to when he is older and, by the end of the book even though he hasn't lived that long, he is definitely a changed man. A.K Blakemore's writing skills are much bettern here than they are in The Manningtree Witches and I am very glad I gave the author another try. The character, though a real person from history, has been written into a fictionalised story and I think that was definitely the best way to go.