When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it’s not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land.įollowing Tarare as he travels from the South of France to Paris and beyond, through the heart of the Revolution, The Glutton is an electric, heart-stopping journey into a world of tumult, upheaval and depravity, wherein the hunger of one peasant is matched only by the insatiable demands of the people of France.Wolf Hall meets The Favourite in this beguiling debut novel that brilliantly brings to life the residents of a small English town in the grip of the seventeenth-century witch trials and the young woman tasked with saving them all from themselves. The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means. But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon.īefore, he was just Tarare. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient’s room.

It is a visceral, thrilling book that announces a bold new talent. The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust and betrayal ran amok as the power of men went unchecked and the integrity of women went undefended. When a child falls ill with a fever and starts to rave about covens and pacts, the questions take on a bladed edge. But then newcomer Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about the women of the margins. Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers – the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued. In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices.

Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow. Parliament is battling the King the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARDįear and destruction take root in a community of women when the Witchfinder General comes to town, in this dark and thrilling debut.Įngland, 1643.

The manningtree witches book review