Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica REVIEW

I recently read Tender is the Flesh. It's a book that I've wanted to read for a while, but the hype on social media initially put me off. But because I'm doing my dissertation on Cannibalism, it had to be done.  

Tender is the Flesh is a 2017 Horror/ Dystopia novel by Agustina Bazterrica. It follows Marcos, who works at a human processing plant as a virus made all animal meat inedible. When he is given his own female 'specimen', his apathetic façade begins to crumble.

I have quite a few opinions about this book, so I'll start with the positive ones. For the most part, I really liked the main character. At first I was unsure about him, I felt that he was lacking emotionally (I know that was the point but still it felt a bit boring at first) but after a couple of chapters, he had grown on me a lot. His relationship with his father was very raw (forgive the pun) and emotional. It felt very genuine, and was one of the only parts in the book that I could feel sympathy for him. His relationship with his sister also felt very genuine, and her characterisation was great as well. Bazterrica did a great job at making me hate a character without making that character overly obnoxious.

Another element of the book that I particularly liked was the gore. It was very explicit and made me feel immersed in the whole human processing experience. The description of certain moments were very convincing, and it was done very tastefully. All of it felt like it had a purpose, and I enjoyed that very much. I think there's a really interesting discussion to be had about the substitution of animals for humans in this novel, but I'm not going to get into that.

So what did I dislike? Quite a lot. But I'm going to try and keep it brief. Straight away it felt like I was just being overloaded with backstory. And I've found this for quite a lot of Cannibal Dystopia novels, the amount of backstory and exposition is overwhelming. I understand that the readers might be confused without it, but I personally would have left most of it out. I think I would have been more immersed that way. That's not to say that the backstory was completely unnecessary, but just the way that it was 'revealed' was very heavy. A more subtle integration into the text would have been better for me to digest. That's also not to say that the writing was bad because of this, I think Bazterrica style is amazing, I really enjoyed the prose of the piece, it was just overwhelming at points.

Going back to Marcos, there were some points in his story that felt a bit forced. His relationship with his wife, and the loss of his son didn't feel necessary. I understand that it is a prompt for the ending, but the if you removed it from the story, it still would hold up quite well. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★★SPOILERS AHEAD★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Leading onto the ending. I disliked it immensely. It felt like it came out of nowhere, and that there was nothing in the main part of the book that even hinted at it. When Jasmine gives birth, it's supposed to be a high tension moment, and it is, to some extent, but the ending was so unsatisfying. I wasn't expecting Jasmine to survive, but for Marcos to go through all the risk of getting her pregnant and keeping her a secret, only for him to kill her at the end, it felt like a bit of a waste. I would have loved to see some empathy in his character, whether that would have been keeping her alive, or killing her out of mercy or something other than what it was. 

Despite this, I think the ending could have been a bit more satisfying if we had seen hints of what was to come at any point during the book. It was a shame, because I had been enjoying it a fair bit, but when I finished it I felt nothing but a bit of disappointment. 

Overall, did I like the book? Yes. Despite all of my gripes with it, it was a good read and I would read it again. Even though there were things that I would change, I can understand the hype for the book. Although, I think the amount of hype that it got did ruin the experience for me: I was expecting it to be the most brilliant book of all time, and for me it wasn't. Overall I gave this book:

★★★☆​☆

I hope you enjoyed this review! I want to start doing more reviews, because I've found that since starting my masters I've begun to think about books a bit more critically, and I also love to yap. If you have any thoughts to share about the book or other things please do leave a comment, I would love to hear it!

All my love

Talia <3