As someone who is just getting back into reading, I often come to this sub to see what others have to say about books I enjoyed reading (heaven help me that I really like Jason Pargin…) and use those threads to find suggestions for the next book to read.
I finished reading A.K. Blakemore’s The Glutton a month ago and was shocked to find not one, single thread about it. It has to be one of the most poetic, engulfing books I have ever read. Like, I can’t stop thinking about it good. Oddly, it isn’t the plot or the morality that I’m thinking about, but the world of that character. The places he visits, the characters in it. Blakemore is such a specific and extravagant writer that I can picture the details in every scene.
I know that a lot of the fun of reading is going “just one more chapter” and then realizing it’s been a hour. But I can’t tell you HOW lost I got in my own head about these books. I’d realize that instead of turning the pages without reading, like I can occasionally do, I was having vivid visions of the world in the book in a way that I’ve just never done before. This book is a work of poetry, almost literally, with every sentence so full of life.
I picked this book up on a recommendation from my local indie bookstore. Please, please do yourself a favor and do the same. Blakemore is an incredible writer. Definitely someone that I suspect will rub more literary readers the wrong way at certain points but even then you’ll still appreciate what she is doing and hopefully you’ll get wrapped up in the world the same way I did.
by MrLeastNashville