{"product_id":"may-we-feed-the-king","title":"May We Feed The King","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn unnamed curator, an archivist, a king and a 750-year-old castle may not seem like the ingredients for a gripping novel, but Rebecca Perry brings them together superbly in her debut novel \u003cem\u003eMay We Feed The King\u003c\/em\u003e. In the final pages the Curator warns the waiting visitors to the castle to \"[l]isten for everything and, above all, pay attention.\" It's advice readers need right at the beginning! This is a novel which requires your full attention to every tiny, even seemingly insubstantial detail. Like the Curator, we need to be fully immersed in piecing together the life of this unnamed King who, we discover, while only being a footnote in history, was in fact a person who loved and felt and longed, just as we do.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs the 750th anniversary of a medieval castle approaches, an unnamed, non-gendered Curator, overcoming some recent personal grief, is tasked with dressing each room, recreating 'just left the room' scenes for public viewing. The castle Archivist, also unnamed and non-gendered, is appointed to assist the Curator with sifting through the extensive historical records to find a 'gateway' to bridge the gap between then and now.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMay We Feed the King\u003c\/em\u003e is a tactile, sensual novel narrated in short vignettes. An award-winning poet, Perry creates prose that's evocative and lyrical. Her narration is also oblique: nothing is fully revealed; instead we are encouraged to peer through keyholes, curtained windows, doors slightly ajar. Characters are obscured by shadows, conversations are heard in snippets, letters are only partly revealed. Like the Curator and the Archivist, we must find a way of 'knowing' the King: his likes, dislikes, predilections, desires and what makes his life meaningful. The King's reign is short; in fact, it occupies just a single page of text in the castle archives. The Curator tells us that '[i]t's important to say that I cried, I wept, when I saw it. What a reduction of a life.' But there is something in this brief record which spurs the Curator's imagination. Moreover, this King begins to be more than a figure lurking in the shadows; he becomes a physical reality for the Curator. Boundaries begin to blur; the past becomes vividly present. What happens in the King's final days, however, remains a mystery. Like the Curator, we are left without a resolution. But this is far from being an unsatisfactory ending; as the review in the Guardian puts it: 'The vacuum where an ending should be is what keeps his [the King's] memory alive and breathing.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the novel's most powerful metaphors is that of food. As the novel's title suggests, while this young King is powerless to do anything of his own accord or without surveillance, his one weapon is the refusal of food. The King has no appetite for ruling, no appetite for deciding the fate of his subjects, no appetite for being a pawn in the Court's gambit. But instead of being a symbol of his confinement, the control of his appetite ultimately becomes a symbol of the nourishment needed for his survival.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs with poetry, what remains unsaid in the novel is vital; it is within those quiet gaps and silences that we as readers find the bridge to understanding. As I read the final sentence, I took a deep breath and realised that I needed to have listened to every single clue and paid attention to each detail, no matter how insignificant they seemed. A challenging read, but entirely worthwhile.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rebecca Perry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":62739484803231,"sku":null,"price":34.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0394\/7236\/5727\/files\/9781803513867_1.jpg?v=1774595351","url":"https:\/\/lanebook.com.au\/products\/may-we-feed-the-king","provider":"The Lane Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}