The Glutton
France, 1798: A patient presents himself at a public hospital in a wretched, moribund condition, claiming to have swallowed a golden fork that tears at his insides. Blakemore’s novel is based on the true story of Tarare, a circus entertainer from near Lyon, capable of eating anything: dead rats, offal, live animals too – and in vast quantities. Unable to satisfy his gargantuan appetite, he ultimately transgresses the greatest of taboos. Sister Perpetué stands guard on the shackled Tarare overnight, under strict instructions not to leave him. She and her sisters have survived the Terror where other professed women have not, because no-one else will care for the sick as they do.
Sr. Perpetué is both fascinated and disgusted by this Hannibal Lecter of the revolutionary era. He is physically repellent, his belly grossly distended though his cheeks are concave. His teeth are rotten stumps, and he stinks. But now, dying of tuberculosis, he is also pitiful, despite what he has done. Indeed, Blakemore’s great achievement is to tell with empathy the story of what had once been a child ‘with a smile as blank and open as a hilltop.’ Tarare’s history unfolds in sustained flashbacks: his morbid appetite appears after an act of extreme violence; he falls in with a group of itinerant entertainers who exhibit him as a freak. He does not know what to do with the kindness a young prostitute offers him, so he clumsily drives her from him. Later, his extraordinary digestion leads to a brief, unsuccessful career as a spy.
This is a compelling but not always easy read (perhaps you too would need to look up ‘feculent’ and ‘atrabilious’), but it is utterly convincing. It is definitely not for the faint-hearted or the squeamish.
