“He wants to say: hunger is all I am and all my life is. Hunger runs through my veins like blood, branches through me like a fungus, swelling and renewing itself daily. I am lost on a sea of hunger, blue and black and heaving and full five fathoms deep below and rarely, rarely do I feel anything besides /hungry/, rarely, rarely does a jolt of feeling or emotion pierce the hide of my hunger, and never, never have I been able to live the life God presumably gave me to live, to dance and think and remember and kiss, no, all my life I have stood at the threshold of my life waiting to be let in because of this hunger, no living for Tarare.” 

In 1798, in France, Tarare, also known as the Glutton of Lyon, was dying in a hospital in Versailles. A young sister named Perpetué is assigned to watch over him and unwittingly becomes a listener to his story. They say he ate a golden fork, and that it’s killing him from the inside. But that’s not all—he is rumoured to have done monstrous things in his attempts to sate an insatiable appetite… an appetite they say tortures him still.

A word of advice: don’t read this book while eating or just before a meal, as it may ruin your appetite. I was near the end of the book, quietly enjoying a croissant, and that scene where Tartare eats bucket after bucket of raw meat was too much. I physically cringed away from the book.

This was a challenging read because Tarare's life is anything but pleasant. He lived a life plagued with poverty and violence and Tarare is too soft for such a harsh world. He was naive, painfully honest and terribly kind in a time when everyone was out to exploit any hint of weakness. It was heartbreaking to see how his optimism and love for life were twisted by those who took advantage of him. 

While often disgusting, I still recommend this book.