Well you wouldn't guess who started her year with an Argentinian dystopian horror novel! Technically the first book read this year was a contemporary romance, but since that book was started in 2023 it doesn't count, right?
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| ★★★★☆ |
You would imagine horror is not my thing as I am easily spooked and avoid horror films like the plague, however, horror in written form always hits differently and I can consume it without affecting my sleeping schedule. Plus Tender Is the Flesh is not exactly the kind of thing I would call horror, it is a dystopian world, it is speculative fiction, it's even gross and gruesome at times, but most of all it is about the human nature, and maybe it is a bit scary when you are the kind of person who desperately wants to believe that at its core our species is kind.
"After all, since the world began, we’ve been eating each other. If not symbolically, then we’ve been literally gorging on each other. The Transition has enabled us to be less hypocritical."
Special Meat
We are years in the future after a virus made animal meat poisonous to people. So now we eat special meat... made out of humans. But nobody thinks about special meat that way. Except maybe Marco, as hard as he is trying to focus on the numbers and the sales part of his job at a special meat factory. It is through his eyes that we get to experience this disturbing future. Marco's wife left him, his father's medical condition is getting worse and his sister just doesn't seem to care. Then one day he is gifted a finest quality specimen that he has no idea what to do with... What will happen if he starts to treat her like a human being?
"No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity. They call them product, or meat, or food. Except for him; he would prefer not to have to call them by any name."
It's a Slippery Slope
I started reading this book as part of my challenge to travel around the world through reading. Through this challenge I want to mindfully pick a book for a specific country rather than read a book and then see what country is set in or what nationality the author is and cross the country off - because my reading is quite diverse. Even this book was on my TBR before I knew the author was Argentinian. Which brings us to the point I am trying to make - it is important to know where the book comes from as it puts things in a different perspective.
You might read this book and think it's vegan propaganda as it takes animal farming (and it shows you many parts of it) but replaces the livestock with humans. I don't think it's just about that but also about how exploitative our society is and how easily we are to accept the way things are rather than abandon our comfortable position.
And if you cannot believe this book could ever become reality, under any circumstance, then take a closer look at our own history on this planet. We are no stranger to treating other humans as less than.
"His brain warns him that there are words that cover up the world. There are words that are convenient, hygienic. Legal."
Eat Your Vegetables
"The human being is complex and I find the vile acts, contradictions, and sublimities characteristic of our condition astonishing. Our existence would be an exasperating shade of gray if we were all flawless."
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica was first published in November 2017 and it won
Premio ClarÃn de Novela and Ladies of Horror Fiction Award
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