A. K. Blakemore's debut novel, The Manningtree Witches, won the Desmond Elliott Prize 2021, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and was a Waterstones Book of the Month. She is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Humbert Summer and Fondue, which was awarded the 2019 Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection, and has also translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo. Her poetry and prose has appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry, the Poetry Review and the White Review, among other publications.
'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
'Relentless and shocking, bursting with life in all its thrilling
vulgarity, The Glutton will dog your days. Blakemore's history is
not to be tiptoed around. Her prose is unstoppable, full of bawdy
viscera, singing of the cruelty and seduction of the past... It
will have you squirming between sympathy and revulsion, pleasure
and pain.' - Alex Hyde
'It's an irresistible subject for fiction and AK Blakemore attacks
it with vigour in her second novel The Glutton... The result is a
baroque triumph to parallel such classics as Rose Tremain's
Restoration and Patrick Sskind's Perfume... Blakemore is an assured
writer with imagery to die for... Sensibly, Blakemore keeps that
action [of the French Revolution] on the periphery, mentioned in
passing or retrospectively, like the insistent beat of a
not-too-distant drum... In one of the book's many unforgettable
scenes, Tarare and his travelling companions enter a chteau already
ransacked by republican marauders. The grime and stains left behind
on the exquisite furniture and a massacre of the household's pet
doves make for a brutal foreshadowing of France's convulsive stride
into modernity. Yet ultimately Blakemore's version of the "Hercules
of the Gullet" emphasises most persuasively the yawning chasm
between feast and famine, licence and denial' - Financial Times
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