Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica paints a nasty portrait of a dystopian society of normalized and industrialized cannibalism. Well-written, disturbing, and vivid in its scenes of sterile horrors, this novel follows the life of a male employee of the human factory. He lost a child, is separated from his wife, and generally miserable, but doesn’t really understand why.
Bazterrica’s writing has a distance to it, which reflects the themes of disassociation from real-world horrors quite well. However, I think the book spends too much describing the banal processes behind the creation of human food products. Not that I don’t have the stomach for it; I am a tough guy and the master of my own mind. I much preferred the struggles, dreams, and growth (or lack-thereof) of the protagonist, who takes one of the women from his factory until his care.
This novel’s overarching metaphor of human consumption offers a lot in terms of commentary for feminism, animal rights, the banality of evil, and the extents of social conditioning. It made me want to read Orwell’s 1984, which, in real life, is the year that A Nightmare on Elm Street released in theaters, and Tender Is the Flesh a “nightmare” on every street. Kind of full circle, don’t you think?
3/5