FREE YOURSELF
What would you do if you found out your compulsions were not your fault?
That something else had been controlling you all along?
What would you do if you discovered there was a dark part of you, a part of humanity, that was put there by an entity older than the stars?
Vince is binge-eating himself into an early grave. He cannot resist the voice inside that encourages him to gorge, an instinctive reaction to every strong emotion.
Finding it increasingly more difficult to live with, he vows to do anything to rid himself of it.
Even if it means stooping to new lows and levels of degradation of which he never considered himself capable.
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe. Today’s review is of one of the weirdest but greatest books I’ve read in a while, and most definitely one of my favourites so far this year. ‘The Glut’, in short, is absolutely bananas. Disgusting bananas, mouldy ones.
Vince just can’t control the impulse to binge, despite knowing full-well how detrimental his habits are to his health. He knows he’s going to put himself in the ground if he doesn’t do something about his weight, but in the moment, he finds all sorts of ways to rationalise eating that cake. Totally understandable, if you ask me. On a serious note, I found Vince’s food issues very relatable – I think most of us can relate to just thinking “f*** it” in the moment and then regretting decisions later. I do it all the time with snacks. Why do they have to be so tasty?!
Vince finds a way to drop the many extra pounds in record time and it seems too good to be true… because it is. I don’t know where I thought this book was going but it wasn’t where it went, that’s for sure. Vince has to perform a ritual, and it was nauseating to read. Very rarely am I this disgusted by a book. I think the only other time my stomach has actually rolled over with the threat of vomiting because of something I’ve read, it was because of ‘Zola’ by D.E. McCluskey. I really don’t like the gross stuff, but here, even though I did have to sort of skim over a few paragraphs (well, pages), it didn’t deter me from the rest of the book, or ruin my enjoyment of it.
I really really loved the plot and the way things progressed in this story. There are so many weight loss and addiction stories and a lot of them are great, but this one put such a unique twist on the “be careful what you wish for” aspect of Vince’s journey. It kept zagging when I thought it would zig – I never knew where it was going.
The world of this beast just keeps opening out and expanding (a clever parallel to the metaphor, when you think about it). I was along for the ride, rooting for (some of) the characters, and thoroughly engrossed and entertained by the entire thing.
I’d recommend this to fans of horror, especially those who love a gross-out. Also, weirdly, I think fans of apocalyptic fiction would find a lot to like here. And people who like monsters. If you’d like to get a copy, the link is below for you:
Happy Goat Horror 
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