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A full-throttle picaresque, it concerns the travails of a soldier and spy known as the Great Tarare<\/p>\n
THE GLUTTON<\/span><\/p>\n by AK Blakemore (Granta \u00a314.99, 336pp)<\/span><\/p>\n Blakemore’s second novel swaps the turmoil of the English Civil War \u2014the backdrop to her prize-winning debut, The Manningtree Witches \u2014 for the convulsions of revolutionary France.<\/p>\n A full-throttle picaresque, it concerns the travails of a soldier and spy known as the Great Tarare, drawn on a real-life figure whose apparently insatiable (and reputedly even cannibalistic) appetites left his 18th-century contemporaries agog.<\/p>\n Blakemore puts flesh on the bones of this quasi-mythical figure by showing his escape from a violent, impoverished childhood. First, we see his life as a travelling showman, captivating onlookers with his unholy talent for munching all and sundry.<\/p>\n Then comes the military, as Tarare’s ravening hunger \u2014 and the mania that surrounds it \u2014 begins to seem an extreme symptom of wider political tumult.<\/p>\n Rivetingly inserting itself into the blanks of the historical record, this is a smart, endlessly stylish novel, glinting with sly intelligence and humour.<\/p>\n U.S. writer Mason may not yet be a household name, but his readers tend to be evangelical about his talent<\/p>\n NORTH WOODS<\/span><\/p>\n by Daniel Mason <\/span>(John Murray \u00a316.99, 384 pp)<\/span><\/p>\n U.S. writer Mason may not yet be a household name, but his readers tend to be evangelical about his talent \u2014 and little wonder.<\/p>\n His last book, A Registry Of My Passage Upon The Earth, was a suite of tales with far-flung settings. His dizzyingly structured new novel is just as virtuosic. Spanning four centuries, it spins a tangled web around the development of a humble homestead scratch-built by two young lovers fleeing a cloistered Puritan settlement in 17th-century Massachusetts.<\/p>\n Narrated as a cut-up patchwork of voices and genres, the book tracks the lives of the land’s future inhabitants, from an orchard-planting colonist to a painter and a true crime writer \u2014 and even a beetle. All the while, ghosts of the past stalk the present.<\/p>\n Mason has the born storyteller’s gift of knowing how to reignite your interest in a new scenario even as you’re mourning the one just gone.<\/p>\n When it comes to being nominated for the Booker Prize, Tan has a 100 per cent hit rate<\/p>\n THE HOUSE OF DOORS<\/span><\/p>\n by Tan Twan Eng (Canongate \u00a320, 320pp)<\/span><\/p>\n When it comes to being nominated for the Booker Prize, Tan has a 100 per cent hit rate. Longlisted in 2007 for his debut, and shortlisted for his 2011 follow-up, The Garden Of Evening Mists, the Malaysian author is currently on this year’s longlist with his latest novel, a multi-layered tale of repression in 1920s Penang.<\/p>\n Lesley, an expat housewife whose husband is traumatised by his service in World War I, finds herself shaken out of her dreary day-to-day by a visit from his old pal, Willie \u2014 the writer William Somerset Maugham, facing financial ruin after a catastrophic investment. Drama lies in Willie’s love for his male secretary, as well as Lesley’s friendship with an Englishwoman accused of murder \u2014 which, for Willie, proves an irresistible subject for fiction.<\/p>\n Mixing satire and sympathy in its portrait of the real-life Maugham, it’s finely crafted and patiently told. A solid bet for the shortlist.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/14\/21\/75447811-12520023-image-a-60_1694723653515.jpg\")
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