Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica #
Tender is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica. My first novel in a little while, this one was a shop’s pick in Charleston, SC during a visit to my mom for the new year. It’s disturbing. The premise: in a near-future world, a global virus has spread among all animals, forcing them to all be killed. In response, sanctioned and regulated cannibalism has become the norm.Or did it? Several characters allude to a conspiracy theory, that the virus was a hoax so that the government could tighten regulation and control the population. Some of the regulations are linguistic: euphemisms (“the Transition”, “meat”, “head” to refer to a human bred for meat, etc) serve to mask the reality of what’s going on. Some are not: the breeding process is very regulated to create humans that in a sense lack humanity (no names, no vocal chords, etc). The protagonist works high up at a meat-processing plant. He—his name is Marcos, but he’s almost uniformly referred to as “he” and the like—is a troubled soul: he does not like the work and the resulting dehumanization, but does so to take care of and provide for an ailing father. He also has dark events in his past that contribute to his dissociative day-to-day existence. While the book depicts truly gruesome events—detailed descriptions of a tour through a human slaughterhouse, a “game hunting” operation, and the like—the plot moves relatively quickly and the narration of Marcos’ inner-life keeps the reader grounded. The prose is moving as well. At one point, an entire paragraph spanning two pages uses a long sequence of comma-separated clauses to both describe and mirror the mental chaos of a traumatic event. I do not want to say too much about the plot,The book has two “parts”, which are separated by a particular event which does, in a sense, change everything. but will just say: the ending genuinely surprised, and somewhat shook me. The take home: Marcos—as we all are I suppose—is still just human after all. Grade: A