Review by mucsiog - Tender Is the Flesh

mucsiog 's review for:

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

4.25

dark reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I feel like I arrived late to the party with this one after going through all the trouble of getting a physical copy when it was the trending topic. A dystopian setting parallel to our own where animal meat consumption is now outlawed by governments worldwide, it is from the perspective of a meat processing plant owner grieving the death of his infant son.

While I’ve seen a lot of readers water Tender is the Flesh down as a vegan think piece, I would have to disagree with this perspective. In my opinion this novel explored the themes of human-on-human violence and what it means to be “human”. The humans that are segregated and labelled as products are never to be considered human but instead are referred to as heads. It is a common conspiracy throughout the narrative voiced by our protagonist and a number of other characters that there never was a viral disease in animals but rather that cannibalism was the answer to overpopulation. It is illegal to keep a head for any purpose other than breeding or slaughtering, and all activities regarding each and every head is to be reported to a government agency. Towards the end of the novel, Mari the secretary refers to a group of humans known as “Scavengers” as less than human for how they brutally murdered a lorry driver, disregarding the group of heads that were also ripped limb from limb that were being transported to the meat processing plant to be slaughtered. Society has normalised violence against the heads to the point where there are extremities of cruelty that are seen as symbols of wealth that weren’t present with livestock beforehand. It is as if humanity never cared about the lack of access to meat but rather the newfound freedom in punishing those they view as beneath them.

While the setting itself was absolutely horrific, as I read through the novel I found myself becoming desensitised to the absolute carnage of human-on-human violence and consumption. I had to close the book once or twice in the first half during the job interview section where our protagonist gives a walking tour of the slaughtering process. It was particularly the description of how the artificially impregnated female “heads” had their arms and legs amputated and lay on sterile tables so that they couldn’t deliberately miscarry. The disturbing imagery of the humans that were sectioned off to be reduced to cattle, while descriptive, I just couldn’t perfectly visualise it. I couldn’t put the image in my head of how humans could actually look like with brands on their shaved heads, naked in crowded pens, and hung upside down to be skinned and butchered.

Could this be because my mind can’t comprehend the concept of humans put in place of animals bred for consumption and stripped of their humanity? But this thought strays from me and becomes a question of what is considered humanity? If gathering livestock in an optimal fashion to be slaughtered for produce in the most optimal fashion is considered to be a human invention, then maybe gathering and killing each other for our food, skin, hair, and meat is the most humane we could be.

Content Warnings