
The Glutton
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Narrated by:
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Graham Halstead
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By:
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A. K. Blakemore
About this listen
A New York Times EDITORS’ CHOICE | Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize | MOST ANTICIPATED by The Guardian • Paste Magazine • LitHub • The Millions • Library Journal
From the prizewinning author of The Manningtree Witches, a subversive historical novel set during the French Revolution, inspired by a young peasant boy turned showman, said to have been tormented and driven to murder by an all-consuming appetite.
“Obscenely beautiful…Every sentence is gorgeous...Powerful and provocative.” —The New York Times Book Review
“This year, I found myself seeking one quality above all others from the books I read: escapism. And no book plunged me into another world quite so bracingly as The Glutton.” —Vogue
1798, France. Nuns move along the dark corridors of a Versailles hospital where the young Sister Perpetué has been tasked with sitting with the patient who must always be watched. The man, gaunt, with his sallow skin and distended belly, is dying: they say he ate a golden fork, and that it’s killing him from the inside. But that’s not all—he is rumored to have done monstrous things in his attempts to sate an insatiable appetite…an appetite they say tortures him still.
Born in an impoverished village to a widowed young mother, Tarare was once overflowing with quiet affection: for the Baby Jesus and the many Saints, for his mother, for the plants and little creatures in the woods and fields around their house. He spends his days alone, observing the delicate charms of the countryside. But his world is not a gentle one—and soon, life as he knew it is violently upended. Tarare is pitched down a chaotic path through revolutionary France, left to the mercy of strangers, and increasingly, bottomlessly, ravenous.
This exhilarating, disquieting novel paints a richly imagined life for The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon in 18th-century France: a world of desire, hunger and poverty; hope, chaos and survival. As in her cult hit The Manningtree Witches, Blakemore showcases her stunning lyricism and deep compassion for characters pushed to the edge of society in The Glutton, her most unputdownable work yet.
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Story
Viola Marek is a struggling real estate agent, and a vampire. But her biggest problem currently is that the house she needs to sell is haunted. The ghost haunting the house has been murdered, and until he can solve the mystery of how he died, he refuses to move on. Fox D’Mora is a medium, and though is also most-definitely a shameless fraud, he isn’t entirely without his uses—seeing as he’s actually the godson of Death.
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Great story! Weird whiny female voice attempt
- By Caitlin Yawger on 09-30-23
By: Olivie Blake
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Paradise Rot
- A Novel
- By: Jenny Hval, Marjam Idriss - translator
- Narrated by: Brie Jackman
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo's sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.
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Wrong Voice
- By Orville on 08-18-24
By: Jenny Hval, and others
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Lapvona
- A Novel
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, believes his mother died giving birth to him. One of Marek’s few consolations is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby. For some people, Ina’s ability to receive transmissions of sacred knowledge from the natural world is a godsend. For others, Ina’s home in the woods is a godless place.
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uncomfortable
- By Stetson on 07-04-22
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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Cold Enough for Snow
- By: Jessica Au
- Narrated by: Angela Lin
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A mother and daughter travel from abroad to meet in Tokyo. They walk along the canals through the autumn evenings, escape the typhoon rains, share meals in small cafes and restaurants, and visit galleries to see some of the city’s most radical modern art. All the while, they talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes, and objects, about family, distance, and memory. But uncertainties abound. Who is really speaking here - is it only the daughter? And what is the real reason behind this elliptical, perhaps even spectral journey?
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Great audio!!
- By David on 12-18-22
By: Jessica Au
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I'm a Fan
- By: Sheena Patel
- Narrated by: Sheena Patel
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Sheena Patel’s incandescent first novel begins with the unnamed narrator describing her involvement in a seemingly unequal romantic relationship. With a clear and unforgiving eye, she dissects the behavior of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world. I’m a Fan offers a devastating critique of class, social media, patriarchy’s hold on us, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.
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chaotic, cringe inducing
- By Uviinaa on 02-11-24
By: Sheena Patel
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Earthlings
- A Novel
- By: Sayaka Murata
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit into her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut who has explained to her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth.
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Intriguing but disturbing
- By C. Parham on 01-01-21
By: Sayaka Murata
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Monstrilio
- By: Gerardo Sámano Córdova
- Narrated by: Victoria Villarreal, Johnny Rey Diaz
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago's lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family's decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family's communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.
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Not exactly what I expected….
- By kisa on 10-06-23
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Stag Dance
- A Novel & Stories
- By: Torrey Peters
- Narrated by: Lee Osorio, Briggon Snow, Eileen Noonan, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.
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A Raw Look at the Trans (and Queer) Experience
- By Jessica on 06-10-25
By: Torrey Peters
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Our Wives Under the Sea
- By: Julia Armfield
- Narrated by: Annabel Baldwin, Robyn Holdaway
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Leah is changed. Months earlier, she left for a routine expedition, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.
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Has stayed with me…
- By Maryanne T. on 10-05-22
By: Julia Armfield
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
- A Novel
- By: Haruki Murakami
- Narrated by: Rupert Degas
- Length: 26 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.
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Wonderful book, flawed narration.
- By REBECCA on 02-08-14
By: Haruki Murakami
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This Thing Between Us
- A Novel
- By: Gus Moreno
- Narrated by: Robb Moreira
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It was Vera’s idea to buy the Itza. The “world’s most advanced smart speaker!” didn’t interest Thiago, but Vera thought it would be a bit of fun for them amidst all the strange occurrences happening in the condo. It made things worse. The cold spots and scratching in the walls were weird enough, but peculiar packages started showing up at the house - who ordered industrial lye? Then, there was the eerie music at odd hours, Thiago waking up to Itza projecting light shows in an empty room.
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Unsure what I feel but it’s a lot
- By Liv Templeton on 12-01-21
By: Gus Moreno
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Perdido Street Station
- By: China Mieville
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 24 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies. Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released.
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Brilliant, wonderful book -- horrible recording
- By James on 08-19-09
By: China Mieville
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Talking at Night
- A Novel
- By: Claire Daverley
- Narrated by: Emma Appleton
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Will and Rosie meet as teenagers. They're opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother's wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer - destined to be one another's great love story. Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered. But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can't help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been.
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I. LOVED. THIS. Emma Appleton is spectacular
- By Audrey Fine on 05-26-25
By: Claire Daverley
A marvelous Baroque tale
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Perhaps my negative reaction is unfair as I’m judging the written work (I’ll address the poor narration later) as literary fiction as a consequence of the online book promoters’ opinions. Author A. K. Blakemore may not have ever made such a claim. While it’s true that the novel is character-driven and introspective, that’s about all it has in terms of its literary qualities as it lacks an over-arching theme (say philosophical or political) there is no character development as the protagonist is as ignorant of why his life is as it is or why life in general is as it from beginning to end. This lack of personal character development results in a lack of reflection of the human condition which to me is an essential requirement for a novel to be considered literary.
As to its place in historical fiction—just because a narrative is set in the late 18th C in the midst of the French Revolution and a myriad of historical people are mentioned and even turn up conveniently for the completely ignorant protagonist to run into (no less that Napoleon even), doesn’t make it a historical novel. What the protagonist learns about or reflects upon in this historical environment is virtually nothing and therefore, the reader gleans nothing.
As to the protagonist—the titular Glutton—his name is Tarare and he is suddenly and inexplicably
cursed with an insatiable appetite that causes him to eat and eat and eat anything organic and at times inorganic just to fill his empty stomach. If we’re to view Tarare’s empty stomach as symbolic of his empty life, soul, existence—ok, I get it, but so what? His eating frenzies only occur when they are used for a pivotal plot point. In other words, if Tarare is truly always starving and unsatisfied why are there long periods in the novel wherein he’s not about the business of gluttonous eating? The frenzies are gimmicks, deliberately described in the most grotesque manner—seemingly just for shock value—to what end? Take away the sideshow freakiness and pare down Tarare’s sad life and how he ends up where he does, and you would have the basis of a reflective character-driven novel that would allow this young man to develop an understanding of himself, but that never happens. He has no idea what the Revolution means and when he’s given a few clues, he simply does not absorb them meaningfully. Why not use the French Revolution to give him an understanding of the meaning of one’s life (try “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens for example). Also, in what ends up as yet another meaningless storyline is the fact that Tarare is sexually attracted to men. His homosexuality is just there and, cynically I got the impression that it could help put a hashtag of LGBQT for sales purposes.
The narration of this novel also made me frustrated as the reader (Graham Halstead) never alters his delivery of any character other than to slightly lightened the voice of a woman. While the novel is set in France, he never offers the slightest French flavor. This should have been read by a French reader who is fluent in English. Every character interacting with Tarare sounds as though he (with a few she(s)) is a wise-guy hanging out with the boys in a generically contemporary place in America—say Omaha, Nebraska. This narrator should only be hired to read first-person narratives or non-fiction. He was awful. Sorry, Mr Halstead this was not a good fit for your skills.
For a while, I kept blaming the narrator for my negative reaction to the book as I was often confused as to who was speaking (truly great narrators are never guilty of that), but the more the novel moved to its conclusion, and I just couldn’t wait for it to end, the more I realized that because the novel itself was merely a series of shocking events that meant absolutely nothing, the clearer it became that no universal aspect of the human condition would be explored or exposed, therefore, rendering the work an overall failure.
The Glutton Fails
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