Tender is the Flesh is a dystopian horror is set in a world where animals are not used for food anymore because there are no animals left but us.
From the description, “Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans – though no one calls them that anymore” …they call them ‘special meat’
And that dissonance is the first battle the reader must endure. From tip to tail, this book is a riveting read that I enjoyed very much. Contains minimal animal cruelty unless you count humans… then it contains quite a bit.
Hi there. Today on Typical Books, we’re going to be talking about Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. I really enjoyed this book.
I see a lot of people saying this is their top read for 2021. I wouldn’t give it that lofty praise. There were some things in this that I found kind of slow, but it was innovative, alluring, and poetic. I loved reading this book. I was mostly intrigued to read this by watching Sadie Hartman’s little TikTok video about some books that feature special meat or barbecue. If you haven’t seen that little video yet, definitely check it out. Go over to TikTok, find Mother Horror—I think it may be on her Instagram as well—and find that video, because I thought it was hilarious. It was great because it also details a whole lot of books I really like and some new ones to me about cannibalism.
There, I said it—cannibalism. That’s what this book is about. Cannibalism. Special meat. That’s no spoiler; it’s right at the beginning, and it’s right in the synopsis. We have had a virus that has tainted all of the animals on Earth. They become the enemy. We have wiped most of them out, not willing to give up our meat-eating tendencies and give ourselves over entirely to a vegan lifestyle. Then we have to eat some sort of meat, don’t we? So, long pork is on the menu.
It’s not an extreme horror novel in that it is not all about hunting down humans and slaughtering them in viscous, horrible, bloody ways. That would be fun and all—that’s been done. There are lots of books about eating people. This takes it into a dark, dystopian, poetic, and beautifully sad landscape. As a teen, I was a huge, huge fan of the film THX 1138, and that was far beyond the time when it was used as a sample in some Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails music. So, not too many years before that, when I heard it in that music…
Those sorts of dystopian stories are very relatable because we can see ourselves coming into that sort of reality, especially when things are getting more stark, bleak, simplified, minimalized, and anti-social. That sort of world really works, and I think that this and the THX 1138 world aren’t too far off from one another. So if you enjoy that, 1984 of course, Brave New World is another one—definitely akin to this sort of work. So if you’re interested in that sort of dark fiction as far as our future is concerned, I think that Tender Is the Flesh is a really good addition to that. I think that if I were to see this filmed, I’m picturing something like THX 1138.
Agustina’s writing is poetic, and I really love this about reading translated works. It’s a whole other chance for this novel to be polished, I believe. I would love if I could instantly learn a whole bunch of languages to read it in its native format, because I think that a lot is lost in translation. Yet at the same time, we do get some sort of poetic beauty when it is in the hands of a skilled translator, which I believe it is. This is a Scribner edition, and it is translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses. I’d have to say she did a fantastic job because it is just beautiful to read. I’m sure the source material was as beautiful.
This is being adapted into a television series from what I understand, and I can see it as a film. I want to see it as a film. While reading this, I could picture this as a screenplay in a way. The scenes are so sparsely painted—it leaves a lot to the imagination. But that sparseness, that room to breathe, the room for desolation and sadness and the missing of animals to really sink in, I think, would be a real boon. So I’m hoping that whoever’s hands this lands in for the screen gives it all of that breathing room that it needs—the quietness and the space and the sparseness. The sparseness of emotion is a theme within this.
Marcos is a little bit of an automaton. He has been shell-shocked by tragedy over and over. His wife is not living with him at this time. He’s lost a son. They had a young son, and they are childless, although they really wanted to be a full-on family. It’s just them, and she’s away right now. So it’s just him, living at this meat processing plant—special meat processing plant—and it is a cold and soulless job. If you’ve ever worked at a processing plant—which I haven’t, but I know people that did work at a pheasant farm—it is just a cold, monotonous, sad existence. And it stinks too, right? So they talk about all of those things.
As far as meat processing, I’ve had hunters and farm life in my family and in my past, so I’m very familiar with the detachment that is involved with that sort of thing. But that detachment, whether you grasp it or not or can imagine it or not, is portrayed extremely well here with that other level of this being human beings. So I loved the way that this was taken. We’re dealing with somebody who, as I said, is emotionally shell-shocked, so they are kind of running on autopilot a lot of the time. The people that are around him—he doesn’t necessarily like. Whether it be family, co-workers, or friends (sort of, question mark?), he doesn’t have a lot of friends because he just doesn’t allow anyone to get very close to him.
I believe that is key to really understand once you get further on, if not to the very end of this book. He does not allow anyone to get close to him necessarily, and you see him pushing away people left, right, and center. He’s extremely anti-social, yet he does have soft spots. And as the reader—because we’re the only person really close to him—we get to see those. It is a really valuable trick to play in that we see him being so anti-social, pushing so many people away. He spends a lot of time alone, but we are spending that time with him. So I really love that tactic. I loved Marcos as a character. He is just supremely tragic.
So, Tender Is the Flesh was a fantastic read—super dark. I really enjoyed the poetic nature of the prose. I’ve got a few books on the go, so next up is Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. If you’ve read it, let me know. I’m very interested because Regina has nothing but good things to say about that book. So do a lot of other people.
Looking at the reviews of this, many of them are saying, “I can see why everyone else loved this book, and I had to read it too. And also, now it’s my favorite book ever.” If there are any other cannibalistic, dystopian, dark future books that are akin to or adjacent to horror that you think I ought to be reading, definitely let me know.
Thank you very much for watching, and have an ooky spooky day!
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I talk horror books; extreme horror, classic, slasher, gothic, and everything in between. Helping you find the next best horror book to read is the goal, and sharing new and old horror from my shelves and new releases is how! Horror, nonfiction and even true crime can be found here as I find that human beings are the scariest thing of all.
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