Tender is the Flesh: Unnatural Selection
By Jacob Guynup
Staff Writer
It’s no secret that the modern meat industry is both monstrous and inhumane. Whether you eat meat or not, it’s impossible to deny that the animals set to be slaughtered are treated in horrific conditions, conditions that we could never imagine being placed into ourselves. Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica seeks to show us just that.
A terrible virus has swept across the globe, infecting every non-human animal on earth. This disease makes all animal meat fatal to humans no matter how it’s prepared or how the animal was raised. This event shuts down all meat production nearly overnight. However, with the period the book calls the Transition, cannibalism has been legalized in the light of the demand for meat and humans have begun being raised and slaughtered for meat like cattle.
The story follows Marcos, an employee working at a slaughterhouse for humans in order to financially support his father suffering from dementia, as he struggles with the reality of what society has come to in the name of consumption. He watches as some of his oldest friends and family fall victim to the transition, either losing their minds, or their humanity.
Tender is the Flesh is a fantastic read from start to finish. The first few pages presented the reality of this dystopia completely uncensored and unabashed of what it is. It didn’t hold back on details, and this up-front nature really hooked me. It doesn’t shy away from these details as the book continues either. If anything, it just keeps adding more and more gruesome detail to the horrors the characters must live through on the daily.
This is an incredible book that seeks to highlight our own faults as humans, especially our habits of overconsumption and dehumanization. If I had only one complaint about this book, it would be in the way it’s translated. The original version of the novel was written in Spanish and released in 2017, but an English translation by Sarah Moses was only released in 2020. It’s not a bad translation by any means, but some of the wording can seem a little off or out of place. This is definitely normal when translating a book, and I know there really isn’t much that can be done if we still want the author’s voice to show through their writing, but it is still a bit distracting at times. Even still, this is a fantastic read for anyone who loves dystopian fiction and isn’t shy of some very gruesome imagery. Overall, I’d rate this novel an 8.5/10.