I happened to read a lot of disturbing books this year. As a horror reader, this is nothing new. However, out of all the books I read (including Duncan Ralston’s Woom, which you can read my review of here), Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica takes the Most Disturbing prize. It is absolutely brutal, but if you can handle it, the story and the prose are impeccable.
Here’s the Goodreads summary:
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.
From the back cover text alone, I knew this book would be a lot. As far as trigger warnings go, this book contains a little bit of everything: cannibalism, murder, desecration of corpses, disembowelment and dismemberment, assault (physical and sexual), gore, and more than I’ve likely forgotten. The cannibalism overshadows everything else for me.
This book made me avoid meat for a few days. It made me think hard about what it would be like to exist in the world of the book, as well as the moral and ethical implications.
For me, the hardest part of reading this book is how realistic everything felt. The way the story sets up how people started eating people made sense and chilled me to the bone. I could see it happening and I hate every second of that.
Throughout the book, Bazterrica doesn’t shy away from sharing the darker side of human nature. Readers are privy to the human slaughterhouses, the slaughtering process, and a host of other unpleasant things. I’ll say it again: this book is not for the faint of heart.
I will also say that, for a book about the brutality of cannibalism, Tender Is the Flesh contains some gorgeous writing. For example, this quote: ““Because hatred gives one strength to go on; it maintains the fragile structure, it weaves the threads together so that emptiness doesn’t take over everything.” And, here’s another one I loved: “He tried to hate all of humanity for being so fragile and ephemeral but he couldn’t keep it up because hating everyone is the same as hating no one.” The descriptions and imagery presented in this book are so vivid and moving, even if in the most uncomfortable ways.
If you’re an extreme horror reader looking for a challenge, check out Tender Is the Flesh. You can grab the book on Amazon or via your choice of other retailers. You can also follow the author on Twitter and Instagram, though all her posts are in Spanish.
What book should I review next?
My own book, an adult vampire novella called Mouth Full of Ashes, was released on October 4. You can order it here! Thanks so much for your support.
Briana Morgan (she/her) is a horror author and playwright of books such as THE TRICKER-TREATER AND OTHER STORIES, UNBOXED, and BLOOD AND WATER. She is also a proud member of the Horror Writers Association. Briana lives with her partner and two cats in Atlanta, GA.
