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Tender is the Flesh Review
Manny reviews Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
BOOK REVIEWS
9/20/20264 min read
Every once in a while, I come across a book or story that feels necessary, so to speak. A story that shines a light on a societal issue that we choose to ignore on a regular basis. What makes Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica necessary is how she wants us to know how quickly heinous things can be normalized when we conflate legality with morality. What the author trades in pure entertainment value, she gains in thematic writing, motifs, and hard hitting topics. Review will contain spoilers.
Brief summary, Tender is the Flesh is a dystopian fiction that speculates “What if cannibalism was legal?” We follow Marcos, a manager of a human processing center, as he navigates life under this relatively new paradigm. “Special” humans for consumption are created in labs and he runs a tight ship to distribute the “meat” to different businesses. He tells himself he’s still in the business because he has to support his mentally ill father, but little by little his true nature bubbles into the surface. Funny enough, it’s the same nature that curdles inside us in real life.
The level of detail in the production, conservation, and distribution of human meat was disgustingly visceral! Members of my book club had to abstain from meat because of how intense the visualization was. Hell, even I had to admit that I was getting queasy as it was going page by page on which part of the human body tastes the best. You can tell that the author took her time studying how a traditional meat processing plan operates. One thing that I needed to take my time with was the writing style.
The writing in this novella was strange for me at first. Sentences would run on, quotes are told second hand, and kind of awkward phrasing in some places. When I realized that this book was translated into English was when I gave the writing more grace and moved along. I will say though, the writing didn’t help with Marcos characterization at all, especially early on. At first, Marcos's emotional distance made him difficult for me to read as a character. By the end, though, I wondered whether that numbness was the point.
Marcos is a hypocrite. If he wasn’t conscious of the ethics of the decisions he made, I would have called him cognitively dissonant. Knowing that the people he processes are human, he calls them “head”. He chastises his sister for participating in this new culture while working in a factory that enables it. Every time he has to eat the “special” meat, he has to give some justification to absolve him. And he does all this all under the guise of “providing for my father”. When his father passes, the story makes it seem like he’s showing his true colors by quitting his job and ruining important business relationships, but no, he does probably the most surprising, yet not surprising thing, in the end (with a chilling quote to follow).
There are many themes at play here. Social conditioning, propaganda, mass hysteria are prominent, but I believe one theme rises above all and is the running motif.
Language.
I believe the major theme of this story is language or communication. The author makes it a point to highlight the power of language. The twins who are deemed evil for having their own language. The hunter, Urlet, was said to be a collector of words as trophies A tool used to shape then justify your reality, or better yet, justify what you do to others. The moment we use language to call a human anything other than a human, we essentially classify them as something below us. And there’s no reason to feel remorse for something below us, right? So you shouldn’t feel bad for whatever happens to them.
You’re not Black, you’re a ni**er.
You’re not a woman, you’re a female.
You’re not human, you’re head.
Throughout time we use dehumanizing language to justify the atrocities we commit. And the justification is further enabled if it’s legal. If legal meant right then there was nothing wrong with slavery (but that’s a topic for a different discussion).
Every day we follow trends or traditions that are morally corrupt, and it takes a level of self awareness and examination to challenge perceived dogmas. And I almost thought Marcos was breaking away from the ball and chain of that dogma when his father passed, but I was utterly and completely wrong because of what he did to Jasmine.
The writing flipped when he gave his “gift” a name. Jasmine. She was no longer called head or female. She was given a name. My expectations were subverted when he decided to “domesticate” Jasmine (don’t get me wrong, I was infuriated when he raped her). I believed Marcos in his grief and loneliness saw the error in his ways and wanted to see if he can humanize this person who was once cattle to then reaffirm that what he takes part in is inhumane. But humans are… a complicated species. He raped her, impregnated her, used her to produce the child he wanted, and killed her afterward. I was ABSOLUTELY FLOORED, but not surprised when I gave it more thought. Marcos is human, flawed and contradictory, just like the rest of us. We can spout all the things we wish we could change about society yet still knowingly participate in those very things we wish to change.
“She had the human look of a domesticated animal”
He recognizes humanity and rejects it in the same sentence. That final line encapsulates who Marcos truly was the entire time. A hypocrite who participates in an action he deems is inhumane only when it benefits him. He was so close to seeing Jasmine as a human that he would have to reflect on the evil he committed so he instead ended her life as to not have that weighing on his conscience.
And to be honest, he’s just like everyone else: A man who’s learned to compartmentalize when to apply his morality and logic.
Tender is the Flesh is heavy despite its word count, memorable in a way that points a mirror at the person reading it. I enjoyed my time with it despite its odd prose because it got the gears turning in my head. Even though cannibalism is the main concept, there’s a lot more meat on the bones of this book when you look past the surface (pun intended).
What do you guys think? Did you read Tender is the Flesh? Tell me down below. Once again this is Mannyreads aka THEBOOKHUSBAND and I have another book to chow down. Peace.