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The Glutton by A.K. Blakemore is a dark, visceral historical novel about the real 18th‑century French figure Tarare, a man infamous for his extreme, almost mythic appetite. It’s one of those books that grabs you by the collar — grotesque, lyrical, and strangely tender all at once.

What the novel is about

At its core, the book imagines the inner life of Tarare, a peasant boy whose prodigious hunger becomes both his curse and his identity. Blakemore follows him from a brutal childhood near Lyon through the chaos of the French Revolution, where he becomes a sideshow performer, a soldier, and eventually a patient in a Versailles hospital, chained to a bed and rumored to have eaten a child.

The story is framed by his conversations with Sister Perpetué, the nun assigned to watch him as he dies — a structure that lets the novel move between the grotesque present and the lush, often heartbreaking past.

Why people are talking about it

• Critics praise its lush, unsettling prose and the way Blakemore revives a nearly forgotten historical figure with both horror and empathy.
• It’s been recognized as a New York Times Editors’ Choice and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, signaling how strongly it’s resonated in the literary world.
• Blakemore herself has said she was drawn to Tarare because food, hunger, and survival were deeply political during the French Revolution — and the novel leans into that tension.

What it feels like to read

Expect something atmospheric, bodily, and morally complicated. It’s not a gentle book — but it’s richly imagined, full of sensory detail, and surprisingly compassionate toward a man history treated as a monster.

If you want, I can break down themes, characters, whether it’s a good fit for your reading tastes, or even help you compare it to The Manningtree Witches.