Reviews

Meat Love: An Ideology of the Flesh by Amber Husain

gabbyrossetti's review

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

This book isn’t a guide to veganism for the everyday reader. It’s quite a dense and academic exploration of ‘meat’ and how it is presented in culture/mediated in society. Thus, while it is quite short, it can take a decent amount of time (and a lot of rereading) to feel like you’ve grasped Husain’s points. But they’re good points, centred on how we have managed to turn animal abuse into something peculiarly validating for our species. 

That said, if you’ve been vegan for a while and have engaged with your fair share of animal rights media, this book might not say anything you haven’t already thought about veganism. It might give you new ways to think about things, though, and a few (more literary/artistic) examples to illustrate our culture's weird relationship with speciesism and violence. I thought it was very interesting, and I can see myself going back to it in the future. 

benpurvis42's review

reflective medium-paced

4.0

elj_ne's review

informative reflective

4.5

The kind of absurdly niche theory I love, this discusses meat eating and class in a way that is rarely touched upon - the idolation of fine, middle-class meat and the idea of expressing love for animals by consuming them, upheld by idealised British TV programmes about farming among other cultural touchpoints. It was a view I'd never really thought about before and found really interesting - why do even those with the clear fiscal ability to not eat meat do so - how is meat-eating whitewashed in mainstream media to make it still culturally acceptable? Also touches on the exploitation of lower classes in pursuit of meat - mainly the use of immigrants in slaughterhouses, and the ways in which 21st century meat-eating is another construct of capitalist consumerism which harms us all in the end.