Book Review: Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Rating: ★★★☆☆(3/5)

---

Introduction:

Released in English August 2020. Read January 2025.

I do not read a ton of dystopian novels and this reminded me why. I can handle ones where the technology has gone haywire or where the government is throwing children into a “game” to kill each other for sport (thanks Hungergames) but this one was a LOT to process. It will stick in your brain and make you consider the fact that our world is not many degrees from this type of plot. This book came out in 2017 but has been on a lot of BookTok lists I have seen and recommendation blogs that I have perused in the last year. So I gave it a shot.

---

Summary: A Brief Overview (Without Major Spoilers)

This is a story originally out of Argentina. It was translated into English in 2020. It is tagged as horror and dystopia when I look at it on Goodreads. But the gist of it is that there was a virus that wiped out the ability to consume meat or even have animals on the planet. They had become dangerous to humans and were mostly wiped off the face of the Earth. Well people complained about the lack of protein available and so the Government started allowing for “special” meat… ie cannibalism. Our MC is a worker at a processing plant. His father was too and is going into the depths of dementia. His wife has separated from him, leaving him lonely and facing the disturbing career he finds himself in. One of the other workers in this field gives him a gift, a “head” of specialty meat. Think ‘head of cattle’ that is alive and well and not a slave. The author tries to make that distinction very clear. Insert a lot of very graphic depictions and not a lot of unpacking of social commentary and you have Tender is the Flesh.

---

What Worked for Me:

The ending. Not to give away spoilers but the ending to me was satisfying. It proved how depraved the world had really become and how even though we as the reader got to see inside the mind of the MC we did not see just how utterly fucked up they actually were until the ending. It was a bait and switch that I believe worked well for this type of novel.

---

What Didn’t Work for Me:

The writing. It was translated from another language so that is a factor, but I did struggle is just how bad some of the writing was in my opinion.

The graphicness. It was gory. It was detailed. It is the kind of graphic gory detail that many stomachs might churn while reading. Some of the characters in the book had a hard time stomaching what they were witnessing but many didn’t and that made the actions even more disturbing.

---

Final Thoughts:

This is a short read. I read it in a few hours. But is is a disturbing read. I found myself reading passages outloud to my husband just to gross him out. It could lead to some interesting conversations. What I wish though is that more of those conversations had happened in the book. There was very little unpacking of the social issues at play and I was let down by that. If you want to see what all the hype is about, read it but I would put it lower on my TBR list.