"Blakemore is a breathtakingly fine writer... 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 Observer

"One of the best books of the year... The Glutton is remarkable for its beautiful language, for its hallucinatory imagery, and for its ability to mingle these things with the world of 18th-century poor folk."--The Guardian

"Blakemore takes Tarare's life, recorded only in a medical paper, and puts the meat on the bones. But what meat it is. Blood drips from every page as she creates a banquet of gorgeously crafted, unexpected images. You'll find yourself turning them over in your mind for days."--Evening Standard

"Drawn on a real-life figure whose apparently insatiable (and reputedly even cannibalistic) appetites left his 18th-century contemporaries agog... Rivetingly inserting itself into the blanks of the historical record, this is a smart, endlessly stylish novel, glinting with sly intelligence and humour."--Daily Mail

"Excellent... Blakemore's writing is exceptional, saturated with the viscera of this life...Tarare doesn't know his letters, but Blakemore gives him the yearning inner life of a poet: the sort of boy who as a child would escape his mother's hut to watch the neighbours' pigs sleep and wonder about their dreams."--The Telegraph

"[The Glutton] has the most visceral, haunting, and downright disturbing historical premises we've seen in a while."--Paste (most anticipated)

"The great gift of this novel is that Blakemore somehow never loses sight of the warm, thrumming humanity that is Tarare. He's a man, he's a monster, he's a frightened boy and he's a living myth. All of these aspects live through Blakemore's lyrical, sweeping prose, making The Glutton a stunning, mesmeric novel of uncommon power."--BookPage (starred review)

"Atmospherically charged and written in eloquent and compassionate prose, this is a lusty feast."--Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"[Blakemore] deftly questions what terrible appetites develop when people are denied love and a place in the world.... In Blakemore's skilled hands, Tarare becomes complex and fully human rather than an abject horror and historical footnote. Viseral and haunting."--Kirkus

"Gorgeous and brutal, striking and wise, The Glutton is, at its core, a rich story of the lengths we will go to find belonging. A lyrical and propulsive reimagined historical rendering that will strike a deep cord with today's readers. Like nothing else I've ever read. Absolutely outstanding."--Chelsea Bieker, author of Heartbroke

"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, author of The Dance Tree

"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

"Can there be any human frailty beyond this author's understanding? The Glutton is 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, author of Cecily