‘The Glutton’

A K Blakemore in Conversation

7pm Friday 7th June

St Mary’s Annexe

Wivenhoe

Tickets £6.00 incl glass of wine/soft drink

Join us for readings and conversation with A K Blakemore.

‘A French peasant with an insatiable appetite lives through revolutionary chaos in a vivid, beautifully written historical novel.’

Stephanie Merritt, The Guardian

‘The Glutton’

‘Sister Perpetué is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient’s room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon.

Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means. The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it’s not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land.

Following Tarare as he travels from the South of France to Paris and beyond, through the heart of the Revolution, The Glutton is an electric, heart-stopping journey into a world of tumult, upheaval and depravity, wherein the hunger of one peasant is matched only by the insatiable demands of the people of France…’

Publisher’s Synopsis

About A K Blakemore

A. K. Blakemore is a poet and novelist from London. Her first novel, The Manningtree Witches, won the Desmond Elliott Prize for Best First Novel and was shortlisted for the Costa and RSL Ondaatje Prizes.

Her second novel, The Glutton, is inspired by the story of Tarare, a peasant and showman in revolutionary France who made a living by demonstrating an extraordinary ability to devour things.

Praise for ‘The Glutton’

‘Blakemore is a breathtakingly fine writer – there are few writers who can be truly likened to Hilary Mantel, but Blakemore is one: not only because Mantel wrote novels about both the French Revolution and the life of a human exhibit, but because Blakemore shares her rare ability to reanimate the past in a way that makes it knowable to us, while remaining true to itself. ‘ The Guardian

‘An embarrassment of riches. A sensory assault fit to slap any reader awake with its gorgeous glut of baroque prose and wise, poised lessons on life, pleasure, class, desire, and love.’ Kiran Millwood Hargrave

‘The Glutton contains some of the most striking writing I have read in a very long time. An audacious and humane study of desire, pain and tenderness; a remarkable book about a remarkable subject by a remarkable writer.’ Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass

‘An extraordinary accomplishment, a truly horrible and truly glorious novel. I devoured it. AK Blakemore’s intelligence is tempered by a profound and merciful human compassion, and the tragic making and breaking of Tarare is going to be with me for quite some time. Heartbreaking. Annie Garthwaite

‘There is…something of Hilary Mantel in the way that Blakemore is able to bring the past (and even more specifically, the febrile atmosphere of the French Revolution, as in Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety) to life with such vibrancy.’ Liam Hess, Vogue

Date: 07/06/2024 | Venue: St Mary’s Annexe
Time: 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Tickets £6.00

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