Book Review: Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

 

 

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

211 pages, Paperback

August 2020 by Scribner (First published in 2017)

You knew this 30-year vegan, lifelong SF reader had to check out this book. While the marketing and the description of the book is labeled dystopian at no time does Scriber admit that this is Science Fiction and horror. It is all three of those things. This novel from Agustina Bazterrica an Argentine novelist won awards and was a highly anticipated translation in 2020. Like many genre works from Latin America, it was kinda unfairly given a magical surrealism treatment in marketing, but that is not the case at all with this novel. Perhaps that made literary types feel less icky about reading a clear SF horror novel. Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow still is not called  SF in many circles, and Margaret Atwood got crushed in an argument with Leguin for not admitting her most famous novel was SF.

I don’t know what stance Bazterrica takes on the genre, but let me get out of the way that I liked this novel quite a bit. I respected what it tried to do.  The inspiration as she told the Irish Times is one I relate to. “Thanks to my own reading on the topic I gradually changed my diet and I stopped eating meat. When I did, a veil was drawn, and my view of meat consumption was completely changed. To me, a steak is now a piece of a corpse. One day I was walking by a butcher’s shop and all I saw were bodies of animals hanging down and I thought, “Why can’t those be human corpses? After all we are animals, we are flesh.” And that’s how the idea for the novel emerged.”

For those of us who stop eating meat it is a terrible realization but one we all relate to. We, vegetarians, have all imagined what if it were humans. Meat-eaters hate those comparisons because it forces self-reflection on a topic that for most humans is driven entirely by taste. Most people only care if something tastes good or bad. Doesn’t matter who is affected just does it taste good and do I have the capital to get it.  

Tender is the Flesh is about mass cannibalism, but it is also about capitalism and the exploitation of human lives. “I have always believed that in our capitalist, consumerist society, we devour each other. We phagocyte each other in many ways and in varying degrees: human trafficking, war, precarious work, modern slavery, poverty, and gender violence are just a few examples of extreme violence.”

Bazterrica did the research, so I don’t know if it is the translation but the end result is a surprisingly bloodless look at the human meat industry. Don’t get me wrong it has moments of brutality but I spent a lot of time thinking about actual Factory farms and how a human version could be worse than what I was reading. Look admittedly I approached similar themes albeit in a satirical form in my own novel The Vegan Revolution with Zombies. On page 4 I feared there might be more in common when the disease GGB was first mentioned. “They tried vaccines, antidotes, but the virus resisted and mutated. He remembers articles that spoke of the revenge of the vegans, others about acts of violence against animals, doctors on television explaining about what to do about the lack of protein, journalists confirming that wasn’t yet a cure for the animal virus.”

 What our novels do have in common is a question of the human-animal boundary, an issue I just recently explored with Doctor Sherryl Vint for an upcoming episode of Dickheads podcast. I do love that this novel that appears to have attracted mainstream success across the spectrum of literary and genre fans while putting forward a message of Animal rights, anti-capitalism, and basic human rights.

Bazterrica does a great job of laying out how gross meat-eating and the process of turning bodies into food is when you get down to it. “Before the transition, the butcher shops were staffed by poorly paid employees. They were often forced by the owners to adulterate the so it could be sold after it had begun to rot. When he worked at his father’s processing plant, one employee told him: What we sell is dead, it’s rotting, and apparently people don’t want to accept that.”

Tender is the Flesh uses the human meat trade as all the best SF does to place a mirror on society that doesn’t want to see that exact reflection. The industry that turns pigs, cows, and chickens into meals is based on keeping the process in the shadows or behind closed doors. That is why some states have made photos or videos of factory farms illegal. They don’t want you to see or understand just how the process works and that creates internal self-denial that drives Marcos through much of the novel.

Early in the novel, Bazterrica has Marcos rationalizing all this. “Whenever he felt remorse he thought of his children and how work enabled him to give them a better life.” But he has no illusions that he is not any more product than the meat he slaughters. “know that when I die somebody’s going to sell my flesh on the black market, one of my awful distant relatives. That’s why I smoke and drink, so I taste bitter and no one gets any pleasure out of my death.” She takes a quick drag and says, “Today I’m the butcher, tomorrow I might be the cattle.”

One aspect of the novel I think Bazterrica really nailed was some of the world-building. At times it is slightly surreal and left up to our imaginations other times she really wants to work out how society would work when cannibalism was normalized as eating non-humans is today. The various ways the novel explores the fading out of funeral rites, the eating of the elderly, and religions like The Church of immolation give the novel more realism than I was expecting. “My life will truly take on meaning once my body feeds another human being, one who truly needs it.”

One detail that didn’t jive with me is a chapter where Marcos gets upset because a meat human is not stunned before being killed. He gets angry because as he says it “This meat died in fear…” and that will affect the taste. I didn’t like the idea that fear only comes for the meat at the moment of death, as if being herded toward death wouldn’t cause fear. Minor nitpick but in a pretty solid novel I expected better.

Last I want to talk about the difference for me between the 4-star book for me and what held me back a little bit.  There is a character who is in charge of inspections and has the title Undersecretary for the Control of Domestic Head. I was awaiting for a name that like cattle would be used to paint the meat humans as 1/3 human or less than human. All this had me thinking of another book.

Through Darkest America by Neal Barrett Jr. is a novel I read and reviewed 11 years ago. It was a post-apocalyptic novel that was released in 1988 under an Issac Asimov presents line. Barrett was a veteran SF writer who was from Texas and was mostly known for a fantasy series but had been nominated for various awards. I consider Through Darkest America to be a masterpiece but it has fallen out of print and is largely forgotten.

What does this have to do with Tender is the Flesh?  Through Darkest America is a story set decades after a war nearly destroyed our species, and mammals are rare. The main character is Howie Ryder the son of a rancher who raises “Stock.” Those are 1/3 persons raised to be meat. Just like Marcos who falls in love with a woman destined to become meat, Howie equals has feelings for a Stock and begins to question everything.

I constantly thought about how much better and more subtle Barrett’s lost SF novel did almost the same point and message. Tender is the Flesh is an award-winning literary scene darling and Through Darkest America is an out-of-print SF novel you can only find used. Both are great, both authors clearly were on the same track and great minds often think alike. That said, Through Darkest America to me was better.

Tender the Flesh however for 999 of 1,000 readers will not have that baggage. It is important and powerful work. The reason both authors wrote about their characters falling in love with women destined to become meat is at the heart of what makes these novels awesome and confrontational. That is what Tender the Flesh is ultimately. A confrontational novel, it is not for everyone but should be. Maybe a novel that makes you laugh or feel happy is an easier sell, but a novel that confronts your soul and makes you think about your life is valuable too. Marcos falls in love with a being who was sold to him for meat. Each cow, pig or chicken is a being you could love just like a dog or cat. A novel that exists to challenge the human animal boundary is one I support.