"We are initiated into a world in which historically accurate foodstuffs can be ordered online a half oyster shell, the exposed flesh shining as if with the freshest brine, is 31.25 for a single piece and begin to understand one of the most striking things about this novel: its insistence upon detail, its utter specificity, set against a deliberate lack of specificity regarding the larger details that the reader's mind naturally itches to fill in."
"It's likely that you'll either be utterly intrigued or deeply put off by that summary of poet Rebecca Perry's debut novel, May We Feed the King, a highly wrought puzzle-box of a book which deliberately wrongfoots the reader at every turn. However, the intrigued will find that it richly rewards those who approach it with curiosity just not in the ways we as readers (and as interpreters of stories in any form) have been trained to expect."
"Soon, the Curator meets the Archivist, keeper of the medieval palace's historical records, and in those records finds mention of the brief reign of a king whose life the Curator will draw on to create their historical scenes. We are not told exactly what the records show, but the Curator does report their reaction: It's important to say that I cried, I wept, when I saw it. What a reduction of a life."
An unnamed king in a medieval palace chafes under a new and unsought burden of power, with an uncertain fate. A present-day unnamed curator of unspecified gender imagines the king's life while preparing to dress palace rooms for public viewing after a personal tragedy. The curator meticulously arranges historically accurate replicas and notes precise material details, including purchasable historically accurate foodstuffs. The curator discovers archival mention of the king's brief reign and reacts emotionally, even as the records withhold fuller context. The contrast places precise physical detail beside withheld contextual information, rewarding curiosity while denying familiar interpretive cues.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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