[...] she didn't care, all she wanted was to go back to a normal life, to life before the Transition.Never ever has a book of mere two hundred pages weigh as heavy as Agustina Bazterrica's cannibal dystopia Tender is the Flesh!
Oh-My-God. I haven't had such an intense reading experience in a very long time. This book grabbed me, it sucked me in, got under my skin and stayed there. Every sentence is meaningful, every single development shocking in Bazterrica's English debut. Surely this book is likely to win a place amongst other dystopian classics like Burgess' A Clockwork Orange or even Huxley's Brave New World. It is a really big deal for me to compare a book to Brave New World in its greatness (Remember my article from the Otherlander's blog a few years ago?) and I would lovingly write a comparative essay on the similarities as well as differences between the two books. Nevertheless, I don't want this review to be based solely on a comparison - Bazterrica's book is too breathtaking to be limited to its similarities to other works, no matter how monumental these are.
Central to this dystopia is a happening designated as "The Transformation"; the emergence of the GGB virus that affects animals only and renders them inedible. It is the point where the meat industry is revolutionized and animal processing shifts toward cannibalistic processes. The reader is shown the full scope of this atrocious industry through the focus on main character Marcos Tejo, a high-level director in a meat processing plant.
"Tell, don't show" is the author's motto and so Bazterrica goes for the "straight from the horse's mouth" technique. While we follow Tejo's daily routine and accompany him at different stages of his profession, there is always an occasion - like a job applicant or a business partner from abroad - to explain the "work", the techniques, the desired result and its consequences. So, if this were a movie the audience would be offered the chance of a unique point of view shot, wandering around in tanneries, breeding centers, butchers and slaughterhouses where humans, human products or "heads", as the euphemism goes, are being processed. Furthermore, there are discussions with representatives of the church, a care home for the elderly, a hunting ground and finally a laboratory, allowing an all-around picture of theological, ethic, social, legal, linguistic and scientific aspects connected with eating humans. This is very important, because although the book is about cannibalism, it is also not. I can't stress enough that Tender is the Flesh is, like every good dystopia, in its core much more than what it describes: namely the portrait of a society which is under a permanent state of emergency and distress. I will further elaborate this point later in the text.
Anger, sorrow, revulsion, loneliness... Meanwhile, Tejo's private life is marked and perturbed by turmoil and tragedies. After the sudden death of their baby his wife Cecilia has left him to gather her thoughts at her mother's house... His father who lives in a care home is slowly but surely losing his battle against dementia... Marcos is so far alienated from sister that he can't even stand visiting her... And, of course, there is also his job. Above all, Tejo misses the companionship of animals and finds at least some comfort and solace in a deserted zoo and in his memories of the place when it was still populated.
Animals as an object and the treatment of animals as the mirror of human behavior play a secondary, but essential role here, although it is a novel marked by their absence and withdrawal. The fear and hate felt towards animals who almost overnight turn against humanity, lead to their almost complete erasure from human existence, leaving a void that will be filled by humans bred for said purposes. And it is the irony of such society that slavery is still seen as uncivilized, inhumane...
But let's go back to Marcos: as the emotional void inside him expands, his attachment to society and industry weakens, his longing for the intimacy and affection he used to feel with his own animals grows. And in our comfortable position as readers of this story we can follow and accept these developments. Even the amounting of these feelings to inconceivable dimensions is to some point comprehensible. But, I dare say, there is nothing understandable in the tragic climax that ends this story, and whose like has yet to be written.
The question whether the main character will be able to pull off their rebellion or whether they will succumb to society's pressure is a central moment in each classical dystopia. Tender is the Flesh does not only stay loyal to this soul-tearing tradition, it goes a step further and gives this dilemma quite the shocking notion, slamming into our faces an outrageous revelation about human nature.
On a last note, as I mentioned above, this book is much more than a moral finger shaking at us for eating meat. It is an educated,
detailed, informed, profound reflection and commentary on the exploitation of the resource that are bodies and that is life. And the "Transformation" is the trauma, the shift of the extent and of the
limits up to which exploitation is approved and allowed in a society. So much that only reading this book is a little trauma in itself, especially in a time when our own transformation lies not far behind us.
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