Book Review #1: "Tender is the Flesh" by Agustina Bazterrica, Trans. Sarah Moses
Examining oppression through state-sanctioned cannibalism
Rating: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️/5
Read: Jan. 2023
Tender is the Flesh (2017) is a grotesque examination of the intersecting relationship between food systems, capitalism, and gender. It can be overly violent at times, but it shows how horror infuses chilling imagery with apt social commentary.
Tender is the Flesh follows Marcos, the middle man at a human processing plant. In the novel’s dystopian setting, international governments have declared animal flesh toxic to consume. Apparently disgusted by his society, Marcos rejects many new, dictatorial norms while simultaneously participating in them.
Without giving away the plot, which stands on its own and culminates in a shocking end, Tender is the Flesh is brutally repulsive. Many scenes, including a vivid description of a woman being harvested for meat and the murder of a group of puppies, made me skip a few pages. However, I was not drawn to this book for its body horror or bleak depictions, but for its original conceit. While tropes around cannibalism usually center on racist depictions of Indigenous peoples or survivors in desperate situations, Tender is the Flesh takes place in a normal Argentinian town. There is a clear separation between the haves and have nots, but the mundane aspects of the story are eerily similar to real life.
At the center of Tender is the Flesh is Jasmine, a human “head” gifted to Marcos by a colleague. Jasmine creates an uncomfortable rift both for Marcos and the reader. We want to see Marcos as a moral and unwilling participant in the slaughter of human beings. He consistently acts revolted by his work– his only motivation being his ailing father and a desire for self preservation. Through his treatment of Jasmine and even his humanization of her, Marcos reveals himself to be just as morally corrupt as the people he denigrates.
To list the trigger warnings in this book would be a Herculean task. Although I am often wary of the trope of abused or mutilated women in horror, I don’t believe Tender is the Flesh employs violence without purpose. The story’s brutality reflects the treatment of female bodies within our social/economic/cultural systems. Note that I use this phrasing intentionally. As the novel points out, we are perceived and often depicted as meat.
Although both genders are bred for meat, female head are the novel’s focal point. As mentioned before, the story demonstrates the entire harvesting process in great detail through a nameless woman. By the end of this grotesque chapter, her body has been split up into different parts, ready to be consumed as “special meat.” (The human head are never referred to as people.) The scene is a way to show not just the reader, but two potential male hires, life and death in the plant. It also symbolizes the denigration and lack of autonomy characteristic of the female experience. One of the applicants expresses glee at the prospect of working there. He makes Marcos uneasy, another indication of the protagonist’s seeming moral righteousness.
The theme of gender ties directly into the novel’s most obvious victim: capitalism. While we can interpret the treatment of feminine bodies in terms of a feminist social message, we can also see it as a larger commentary on the treatment of the worker in capitalist society. This functions in a two-fold way. First, the head are metaphors for the commodification of the worker. Second, the plant workers are exploited by the system and reminded of this exploitation in seeing how close they are to becoming meat themselves. There is a constant and unsettling relationship between feminine figures and the working class.
Seeing as this novel deals with the overarching fear of government and examines the meat industry, it is also fair to read it as a metaphor/criticism of overconsumption and the conditions at slaughterhouses, which are awful for animals and humans alike. As many climate activists have already pointed out, it is not Earth that will die, but people. By replacing cattle and swine with humans, the novel literally depicts us destroying ourselves.
While the novel has few pitfalls, one major issue is Bazterrica’s preference for symbolism over plot. This is not an indictment of the trend overall; many great books forgo plot in favor of meaning. However, Bazterrica does not fully explore why the world chooses to engage in cannibalism. There is an argument to be made that we are only steps away from eating our fellow humans because of our sexism, racism, capitalism, etc. This makes symbolic sense. But the novel’s reliance on loose world-building in the first chapters that ignores vegetarianism or veganism makes the story lose traction as a whole.
There is a strange bleakness and beauty to Tender is the Flesh. Its short length and shocking contents make it difficult to put down– forcing the reader to consume it quickly and without reprieve. We see ourselves in Marcos’ hypocrisy while maintaining a great deal of disgust for a reality that we hope never to inhabit, but, perhaps, already do.
🩸THIS WEEK’S BOOK STATS🩸
Current Read: Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Progress: 225/355 pages