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SPOILERS
SPOILERS
Summary:
Summary:
The setting is a dystopian future in which animal meat has become poisonous to humans, causing institutionalized cannibalism to take over the meat industry. In a hyper-capitalist society, human meat (special meat) has created its own market.
Marcos works in the special meat supplier industry, supplying humans (heads) to several slaughtering and packaging houses. In this work, he is hoping to save enough money to take care of his dying father in retirement. Marcos is separated from his wife Cecilia after the loss of their first child and lives alone.
The novel starts with Marcos visiting one of these special meat processing plants and touring the facilities, observing a number of normalized atrocities. The same plant gives him a female head as a treat of some sort.
Marcos has interactions with his sister and nephews, as well as Cecilia. These interactions grow his apparent loneliness, and Marcos starts to rape and attach himself to caring for his new female head whom he names Jasmine.
Time passes and Marcos interacts with a few more characters including a sexual encounter with a butcher named Spanel, a meeting with a gamekeeper named Urlet, and some dogs at the zoo. Marcos' father passes.
It is later revealed that Jasmine is pregnant, and once she goes into labor, Marcos calls Cecilia (a nurse) to assist with the delivery. When the baby is born, Marcos disposes of the head, and he and Cecilia commit to raising the child as their own.
Noteable quotes:
Noteable quotes:
The red text were the notes I had written on the page, transcribed under the quote they were in reference to.
"He uses technical words to refer to what is a human but will never be a person, to what is always a product...No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity. They call them product, or meat, or food. Except for him; he would refer not to have to call them by any name" (pg. 8).
The blunt erasure of humanity here in favor of class and moral or possibly religious purity is somewhat reminiscent of slavery, wage labor, the reduction of a person's life down to what they can do for you. How evil and clever. I suppose that's the best option - you're not evil for "forgetting," and not depressed for remembering.
"On the way to the exit, they pass the barn where the impregnated females are kept. Some are in cages, others lie on tables. They have no arms or legs. he looks away. He knows that at many breeding centers it's common practice to maim the impregnated females, who otherwise would kill their fetuses by ramming their stomachs against the bars of their cage, or by not eating, doing whatever it takes to prevent their babies being born and dying in a processing plant" (pg. 22).
The commitment mothers have to protecting their children, even when it means killing themselves, even when it means killing their children, is so fucking dreadful and beautiful at the same time. The love mothers have goes so far beyond care and attachment. It's a force of nature, in my case one of the most powerful forces out there. This specific art reminds me of Beloved, the love that is pressed and pressed with the worst decision anyone would have to make, needs to be made. It's not just human nature, it's motherly instinct and birthright.
"Spanel has an arrested beauty about her. It disturbs him that there's something feminine benath the brutal aura she takes great care to give off. There's something admirable in her artificial indifference. There's something about her he'd like to break" (pg. 39).
"He thinks this man is dangerous. Someone who wants to assassinate that badly is someone who's unstable, who won't take to the routine of killing, to the automatic and dispassionate act of slaughtering humans" (pg. 64)
The sort of industry seems not just a way to feed people's physical hunger, but their (men's) hunger for violence, and blood. *Fleabag - Women already have pain, violence, and tragedy, in their lives, whereas men need to go out and find it. This slaughter could satisfy men, but I think once it's deemed "morally acceptable," which, in this book, and in real life perhaps, is already happening, the violence won't seem nearly as satisfying. There has to be an air of rebelliousness to it, moral corruption. If that crucial aspect is gone, then men will simply find more ways to inflict pain.
If women are built with pain, and men go out and find it, is pain a necessary part of the human condition? Is pain, violence, and tragedy, required for a fulfilling life? Do the answers to these questions lie in psychoanalysis, religion, or subjective empiricism?
"But the pain, he intuits, is the only thing that keeps him breathing. Without the sadness, he has nothing left" (pg. 72).
"It's then that Spanel screams, she screams as if the world didn't exist, she screams as if words had slit in two and lost all meaning, she screams as if beneath this hell there was another hell, one from which she didn't want to escape" (pg. 89).
All of Part 2 Chater 4, including:
"Urlet selects each word as though the wind would carry it away if he didn't, as though his sentences could be vitrified in the air, and he could take hold of them, and lock them away with a key in some piece of furniture, but not just any piece, an antique, an art nouveau piece with glass doors" (pg. 138)
"He pulls it away quickly, unable to hide his disgust, unwilling to look Urlet in the eye, because he's afraid that the presence, the entity that lives under the man's skin, will cease clawing at him and be set free. Is it the soul of a being Urlet at alive, one that got trapped inside him? he wonders" (pg. 140).
"The human being is complex and I find the vile acts, contradictions, and sublimities characteristic of our condition are astonishing. Our existence would be an exasperating shade of gray if we were all flawless" (pg. 141).
"After all, since the world began, we've been eating each other. If not symbolically, then we've literally been gorging on each other. The Transition has enabled us to be less hypocritical...Follow me, cavaler. Let us take pleasure in the atrocity" (pg. 142).
"Isn't it strange that no one's found a cure? What with laboratories that are so advanced they're able to carry out cutting edge experiments" (pg. 186).
"She had the human look of a domesticated animal" (pg. 209).
Review and notes:
Review and notes:
5 stars - The writing itself is so understated, the words just enter your mind seamlessly, Agustina Bazterrica has such a command of the language, and Sarah Moses, the translator, did absolutely incredibly. The plot, symbolism, commentary, and everything else is masterful.
Tender is the Flesh illustrated cover by Zora Weir-Gertzog
Find more of her artwork here
The first quote I highlighted was the first moment in the book where I saw that the horror being written was not going to be fantastical, but extremely close to home. The sinister nature of that first quote becomes even more sinister when one compares Bazterrica's fictional world to our very real one. The true horror is how we have all been living in the same society, yet we face one another's humanity every day. Sure there are attempts to dehumanize the working class, but no one so blunt as those in Tender is the Flesh. If it is so sickening to watch "special meat" be cut up and sold, one can only dream of how horrible it is to watch the same happen to real people. Though, it's not a dream, not even a nightmare, it's reality.
This novel is known by many for being disgusting, conceptually and in prose. I have a fairly high tolerance for such things but the moment in the book that first gave me pause was age 21. The description of the harvesting of milk and the breeding process from the women was gut-wrenching. Furthermore, it was simply tragic. Read my note for one of the quotes in this pasasge emphasizing the motherly instinct to protect her child. This passage is a testament both to man's cruelty and mother's love. For me, this was the height of emotionality in the novel, though the remaining 180 pages held quite enough more.
The third specific assage I would like to go over is Marco's visit with the character Urlet, a wealthy and eccentric gamekeeper. Urlet's offerings of philosophical, sociological, and other sorts of truths, unfortunately, have almost less of an effect because they are coming from someone seemingly very out of touch, which I'm not sure was Bazterrica's intention. However, Urlet's conversation is an incredible read even on its own, and one of the most engaging and simply entertaining parts of the novel. The highlighted quotes from this conversation specifically are an incredible demonstration of Bazterica's sublime prose and intelligence.
The final specificity I would like to talk about is the end of the book: Marcos and Cecilia (his wife) taking a head's newborn baby for themselves. This ending was one of the most shocking and impactful ones I have ever read, or seen for that matter. I can't tell you how long I sat staring at that last age, unable to close the book out of shock, fear, understanding, confusion, and overall outrage. To be clear, not outrage at the author, but at the characters, the story, and the hope that I as a naive reader built up for this narrative, hope that was quickly squashed and spat on. I will attempt a semi-coherent analysis of the ending here:
Marcos, unbeknownst to the reader, of even himself, it is to be debated, raises and keeps an escaped female head (soon to be special meat) in his barn, rapes and impregnates her, all for the purpose of raising the child with his wife, Cecilia, who is known to be infertile. I don't know is this was a common interaction, but I was under the assumption that he wished to raise this baby with the head, whom he named Jasmine, and forget about his wife. This is now a belief I feel incredibly stupid for, but I think it was one Bazterrica intended to impose. As Marcos and Cecelia already went through the pain of losing one child, it is rational to try and birth another child without risking the same pain, and the head is a fine way to do so. It is how Bazterrica built Marcos and Cecelia to be loving and compassionate parents, grieving the loss of their first child, that made the act of stealing an innocent woman's baby from her and murdering her after, an incredibly out-of-character act. But after just a few minutes of reflection, it is clear that the grief of losing a child cannot be discounted as a complete motivator for such an act. It is a selfish and cruel thing to do, but when two people have lived through a world of such depravity for so long, and have gone through experiences no parents should have to go through, empathy seems like something for only the strong.
It is with this final note that I would like to conclude my final review. It is crude and naive to expect people to do good things in a world of so much bad, and it is the individual acts we as human beings witness of each other every day that indicate the moral quality of our society. Meaning, to judge whether we live in a good world or a bad one, look not just to the people around, you, but yourself, look at the things you do, and the thoughts you have, because more often than not, they will be a reflection of your surroundings. Now, it is up to each of us weather we want those actions, thoughts, and surroundings, to change.
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