It is a truism of creative writing classes that hunger of one kind or another is a prerequisite for the protagonist in any drama. AK Blakemore’s second novel, the follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut, The Manningtree Witches, examines this idea of hunger in its most literal and extreme manifestation. As with her previous novel, it is inspired by a historical figure – in this case, the Great Tarare, a French peasant who lived at the end of the 18th century and became a freakshow attraction on account of his prodigious appetite (he is said to have eaten improbable quantities of food as well as household objects, live animals and a toddler).
In Blakemore’s reinvention, Tarare’s short life spans the turbulent years of the French Revolution and its aftermath – a period when hunger is rife and people are driven to brutal acts by desperation and ideology. Moving between the days leading up to his death at 25 in the care of a young nun, Sister Perpetue, and the impoverished youth and itinerant life that led to his notoriety, the narrative neither explains nor justifies Tarare, seeking instead to “offer the most believable iteration of a myth”, as Blakemore says in her afterword. Though she resists simple binaries of guilty and innocent, victim and perpetrator, the reader can’t help but share Sister Perpetue’s mix of sympathy and revulsion as she learns her patient’s story.
Blakemore is a breathtakingly fine writer, with an assurance and verve that make it hard to believe this is only her second novel. An award-winning poet before turning to fiction, she can conjure with equal force the beauty of the natural world and the deathbed stench of rotting wounds. 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 Glutton by AK Blakemore is published by Granta (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
