BOOK REVIEW: MAY WE FEED THE KING By Rebecca Perry (Granta, 2026)
‘Listen for everything and above all, pay attention,’ is what the curator of the palace of a forgotten king says as they allow the expectant audience through the door. Rebecca Perry's debut novel MAY WE FEED THE KING is definitely a book in which we need to pay attention. Like a curator meticulously setting a scene, Perry does the same with her narrative. Each sentence, each word is placed carefully in position for a reason. It's up to the reader's to unravel the truth. Or is there really any one truth to unravel? The author asks, 'How do we know anything about history?' That Rebecca Perry is also a poet is obvious in her writing. The prose is beautiful and both pared down and yet laden with layers and layers of meaning.
‘Listen for everything and above all, pay attention.’
The narrator, an unnamed curator whose job it is to set the scenes in rooms in palaces and make them look alive, is recently recovering from a tragedy which is not revealed. Their tone is unsettled, unsure, and we understand that they are diving into the details of the scene setting more to forget something from their own past as they set up another past. The palace in question was once known to have been lived in by a reluctant king. Having come to power at the death of his brothers, he is neither prepared nor keen to take on the role. And yet he has all the power at his feet. He may do as he pleases, demand food and luxuries, attack other kingdoms, and yet the one thing he desires is his own freedom. In unravelling the king's story the narrator dives deep into the details of the way he must have lived. The book is heavy on detail because of course that is what the curator is there to do, to bring out the details, the food, the clothes, the furniture, the way objects are placed in the room. Each corner is thought through, each plastic grape placed exactly the way it should be placed. And yet there are no exact details of the lives of the king or the narrator. This is what we need to unravel for ourselves.
This is a beautiful novel written with great precision and control. It's a novel that needs to be read more than once, and even then we may still come away with many unanswered questions. But that is exactly what the author has set out to do. MAY WE FEED THE KING recently won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and has been longlisted for the Booker. It is a well-deserved winner and I hope it continues to win accolades as it rightly should.
MAY WE FEED THE KING: Rebecca Perry ( Granta, 2026)