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A review by aformeracceleratedreader
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
3.0
Read trigger/content warnings! There is a lot of unsettling content.
Overall, a good, horrific book. Not horror in the tradition sense of some mystical spooky creature or one bad guy lurking, but because it is something you could see actually happening in the world on such a massive scale. cannibalism is a scary thing to think about and in this book it is government sanctioned. It's also horrific because this is what the meat industry does to animals on the regular which we as consumers don't think about. So seeing humans being treated like cattle or pigs is quite jarring in many ways. Like how could you get to a point to treat people like this and how did we get to the point to treat ANIMALS like this right now, today.
The ending was a little shocking but also a bit disappointing. I had to read other discussions on the ending to really understand and think about how the story led to that moment. So it made sense when I really thought about it but it was a bit unsatisfying at the same time.
Also, there was brief mention of specifically black men being hunted for sport that I felt was kind of unnecessary and using black people's trauma/death as an unneeded detail. The author could've gotten the point of a specific character being creepy/dangerous/unsettling without using black trauma. I just want to warn any reader who doesn't want to see that in the books they want to read.
Overall, a good, horrific book. Not horror in the tradition sense of some mystical spooky creature or one bad guy lurking, but because it is something you could see actually happening in the world on such a massive scale. cannibalism is a scary thing to think about and in this book it is government sanctioned. It's also horrific because this is what the meat industry does to animals on the regular which we as consumers don't think about. So seeing humans being treated like cattle or pigs is quite jarring in many ways. Like how could you get to a point to treat people like this and how did we get to the point to treat ANIMALS like this right now, today.
The ending was a little shocking but also a bit disappointing. I had to read other discussions on the ending to really understand and think about how the story led to that moment. So it made sense when I really thought about it but it was a bit unsatisfying at the same time.
Also, there was brief mention of specifically black men being hunted for sport that I felt was kind of unnecessary and using black people's trauma/death as an unneeded detail. The author could've gotten the point of a specific character being creepy/dangerous/unsettling without using black trauma. I just want to warn any reader who doesn't want to see that in the books they want to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Sexual violence, Torture, Cannibalism, Child death, Classism, Confinement, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Trafficking, and Violence
Moderate: Alcohol, Drug use, Excrement, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Slavery, and Toxic relationship