I’m not sure how to review this book…

I think it was good, and possibly important, but I would never recommend it. The story kept me engaged, but there were many parts I wish I’d never read. (Images I want to erase from my mind, and a feeling I want to cleanse from my soul). It was a work of fiction that felt uncomfortably possible.

The jacket reads:
“Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.”

Let me say this: I thought this book would merely be a “PETA book of the year.” Meaning, I thought it would find its way onto every vegan and vegetarian’s must-read list, an example to hold up as to why we shouldn’t eat meat, why we should stop the terrible things we do to animals. I thought it would basically illustrate, “This is what we do to animals, imagine if we did it to humans. Now, shouldn’t we stop doing this to animals?”

The message goes much further than that. It goes deeper. I thought the horror would be superficial and gory, shock and awe. The horror in this book is existential. The horror in this story is not as much about evil actions, as much as it’s about evil nature. It explores what we are. The author asks us to look in the mirror, and see how apathetic, and dissociative, and manipulative, and cruel we are. To animals, yes, but also to one another.

“Tender is the Flesh” dares you to believe it’s merely fiction, and not an apt portrait of humanity. What I found horrifying is that I couldn’t. 

The story is about cannibalism in a broader sense. A devaluing of humans on a governmental level, a societal level, an interpersonal level, and the surprisingly small amount of apathy it takes to build a dystopia.

I’ve read a lot a dystopian fiction in my life. No book has left me with as much utter sadness as “Tender Is The Flesh.” A lot of people who’ve read “1984” by George Orwell tout the idea that the story isn’t about a possible future, it’s about our very-real current state. A large part of me felt the same about “Tender is the Flesh,” and it was gutting.

I hope to forget how “Tender is the Flesh” made me feel, though I doubt I will.

That was probably the whole point.