May We Feed the King

Almost a fairytale… Perry’s novel is a sly and suggestive commentary on the act of historical novel writing itself * Financial Times *
A highly wrought puzzle-box of a book… It is as though we, not the long-dead courtiers, are the ghosts, as we creep around the palace peering into its rooms dressed in careful set-pieces, trying to interpret complex and momentous events from the few clues left behind * Guardian *
The historical fiction I have always wanted to read. Surreal and dreamlike… With an eye on the tiny, overlooked details of worlds long gone, this book felt like something hidden come to life - what is real, and what is true, and in the middle of all that, what really matters? – Jessie Burton
May We Feed The King floored me with the precision of its emotional insights and eccentric view of history-as-narrative… A sort of perfect snow globe, presenting a decadent world in miniature that surprises us with the depth of its reflections on power, yearning and loneliness – A. K. Blakemore
Perry combines effortless exactitude with canny ambiguity to create a novel that is always as stimulating as it is enchanting. May We Feed the King is a rare achievement, I absolutely loved it – Claire-Louise Bennett
Meditative, compelling and intricate as a puzzle box - I found myself turning it over and over, admiring and wrong footed and dazzled – Kiran Millwood Hargrave
An artfully told, dizzyingly detailed descent into the murkiness of the past. Perry’s prose is needle-sharp, lush as a feast. A book to devour – Lucy Steeds
A gemlike take on historical fiction, moving between a curator who creates luscious and historically accurate tableaux in historic buildings, and the life of a reluctant king. It’s intricate and uncanny and beautiful – Sophie Mackintosh
I loved this book very much, I know I will return to it and anything else Perry writes, there is magic here – Daisy Johnson
May We Feed the King is exquisite, every detail, object, image, and feeling startlingly precise, illuminated from within. I entered the novel easily, and, once there, the world outside its pages faded blissfully away. It was the only place I wanted to be, the only book I wanted to be reading – Amina Cain
An arresting and daringly imaginative meditation on history, duty, masculinity and the stories we are drawn to. In gorgeously measured prose, the novel sets the historical alongside the fabular to conjure a world of intrigue and detail – Daisy Lafarge
A small gem. Enchanting and elegant… Brimful of beguiling oddness, it delights in the smallest, most subtle historical details, while delving into the emotional truths nestled in the hearts of the lonely curator and the unambitious, forlorn king * Daily Mail *
May We Feed the King contains a lot of sumptuous writing about sex and desire… spellbinding and stirring * Sunday Times *
Elegant, elliptical… This is a taut and assured first novel which surely marks the beginning of an eminent novel-writing career * Irish Times *
Wildly original… Kept me glued to the page * Good Housekeeping *
Perry’s style in evoking the royal household, with its intrigues, despair and backstabbing, is poetic and visceral * Herald Scotland *
A beautifully crafted novel of mise en scènes. Perry blurs the lines between historical narrative and modern narrator, shining a light on the inescapable and murky unknowability that permeates how we tell stories of past and present – Susannah Dickey
Funny, sharply sad and full of real love. Majestic – Ben Pester
The narrative floats between the present and an imagined past in which a reluctant young king and his attendant move through a palace thick with unease and bound by rituals. Characters’ names are withheld and time is unstable. What feels real is texture: the feel of air in a room, the glint of light on an elaborate feast * Observer *
May We Feed the King feels like a love story between the present and the past, especially when it returns to the curator and considers both the intimacy and the loss involved in recreating history… We witness two kinds of resurrection: that found in the art of fiction and that found in the art of curation, both bringing the dead vividly back to life * Times Literary Supplement *
[An] elegant, elliptical debut… This is a taut and assured first novel which surely marks the beginning of an eminent novel-writing career * Irish Times *
In her vivid debut novel, Rebecca Perry tests the limits of history… Perry stages a rich feast of images and ideas * Observer *
Exquisite… This book is sheer magic - let it bewitch you into roaming the King’s inner chambers, fever burning in your heart * Big Issue *
An exquisite debut novel that ghosts over the past and present with sympathetic longing. Reader, I savoured it… Perry captures the King and his entourage with delicious attention… This book is sheer magic - let it bewitch you into roaming the King’s inner chambers, fever burning in your heart * Big Issue *
Among gorgeous descriptions of scenes from courtly life, both as it was lived at the time and later reconstructed as historical artefact, this artful novel’s dual narratives leave readers contemplating the allure of the artificial, power and escapism, as well as which histories survive and why * Konfekt *
Refreshingly different… Perry entices us to watch events dispassionately, much as secret observers might, slowly revealing the underlying mystery, even the inklings of a love story * Historical Novels Review *

Rebecca Perry is the author of two full-length poetry collections - Beauty/Beauty and Stone Fruit - both published by Bloodaxe Books (2015, 2021), as well as four pamphlets. Her poetry has been shortlisted for awards including the TS Eliot Prize and her first collection won the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Her first work of creative non-fiction - On Trampolining - was published by Makina Books in 2023. She is from London, where she also lives.

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