I wanted to write historical fiction somewhat outside of the genre,” says poet Rebecca Perry. In her Booker-shortlisted debut novel, May We Feed the King, she does exactly that, favouring specific, sensory details of an event over larger ones, such as names and timelines. The novel follows an unnamed curator who restores monuments and preserves artefacts until she encounters a forgotten king, uncovering not only his life but the power dynamics that shaped it, and the tension between those who seek power and those who find themselves caught up in it.
Written in short chapters, the novel moves with precision and clarity, though its restraint may leave readers of historical fiction wanting more. The narration is in the first person, and the curator’s love for artefacts and monuments emerges through an idealistic lens, evident when she observes, “it is not a palace with a history, but the location of filming for such and such, and people come for tours, filling the café and gift shop.” The world she inhabits is modern, while the story moves across different times, both directly and through subtext. As the novel unfolds, her desire to communicate becomes the impulse that leads us towards the life of a forgotten medieval king, who, after being crowned, doesn’t want to govern. “Ultimately, I want my work to communicate with everyone, but it is those people I really hold in my mind,” the curator says.
Yet the book often leaves us wanting more at the end of a chapter, even as its poetic prose leaves us half-dipped yet fulfilled. Perry’s attention to appetite and ecology delicately connects the novel’s modern and historical strands. Sensuality and voyeurism also shape the protagonist, evident when she recalls why she became a curator: “I was overcome by the sensation that I was in someone’s living room, in their life.” She encounters the King through an archivist who asks her to guard and beautify his chambers and possessions. As the records reveal his life, she begins to recognise her own in it, marked by questioning, unconscious surveillance and gendered deprivation.
The records reveal that the King was murdered at his dining table, but Perry makes his death poetic through the curator’s gaze: “I can assume that they knew there was not a inconsiderable chance they would die (they did) and that they would therefore have eaten the best, the rarest, food that would have been available to them.” Her contempt for his killers and their opportunism remains implicit. The sensuality deepens when she calls him “my king”, linking her flesh to the records and despising those who killed him. Yet her fascination with power remains conflicted: “What real good can come from presenting to the public the preferences and tastes of people who willingly, joyously, have a great shoe on the neck of their people?” Through this tension, her admiration for the King becomes inseparable from her unease with power.
Perry’s attention to appetite and ecology delicately connects the novel’s modern and historical strands. Sensuality and voyeurism also shape the protagonist
After the King is murdered by his ministers and courtiers, Perry’s grotesque treatment of death emerges through his loyal attendant. It begins viscerally with the devouring of chicken and the attendant, while making love to his wife, imagining the King’s sweaty back and trying to smell his bedroom. “His wife stilled him, placed a hand to his cheek. He looked down at her and saw the dead Queen, laid out in the chapel, her stomach still a small mound from the recent pregnancy. He had to stop. He could taste death in his mouth.” Food becomes the novel’s binding force, connecting its characters and their bodies.
While reading May We Feed the King, we are repeatedly confronted with our own dark and glossy selves. Though the novel shifts abruptly between situations and moments, Perry is less interested in delighting us than in making us question what we believe and what we expect from those who lead us. She lingers on our judgements, turning the mirror towards us and forcing us to confront the ideas we carry about power, desire and ourselves.