A review by wetdirtreads
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Did not finish book. Stopped at 70%.

I went into this book as someone who a) really enjoys horror, b) is used to and can comfortably engage with very distressing content, and c) hasn’t eaten meat in 14 years and is very familiar with the horrors of the meat industry as it exists under colonialism and capitalism. But, I’m sorry to say, none of this was enough to save TitF for me.

 

TitF provides social commentary on the very real horrors of living within a colonial, capitalist, white supremacist world, where those rendered ‘undesirable’ (by virtue of their race, class, gender, etc.) are violently oppressed. This extends to non-human oppression, specifically that of animals, through criticism of the meat industry and our differential treatment of animals we eat compared to those we don’t.

 

Bazterrica’s critique seeks to highlight how the violence of a minority is permitted to continue through the complacency of the majority. Language is a central theme in this commentary, as Bazterrica explores the way people use (and strategically don’t use) language to ease our cognitive dissonance–to distance ourselves from the violence we remain complicit in despite knowing better.

So far so good, right? Conceptually, all of this is right up my alley. What absolutely missed the mark for me was the execution.

 

TitF throws the reader straight into the deep end from the first page, and remains consistently fucked up throughout. The book contains repeated visceral depictions of racist violence, r*pe, mutilation, animal cruelty, and of course, cannibalism. At no point is there any relief from the text’s disturbing content; the intention is for you to feel utterly disgusting throughout.

 

I quickly found myself incredibly frustrated by the resultant excruciating monotony. And the entire premise of emphasising the plight of oppressed communities began to fall flat for me when it became clear that the text was only interested in extending empathy to a select few (read: consistent sanism, human trafficking subtext that felt suspiciously whorephobic, etc), especially given the meticulous emphasis on language. But I was still interested in the concepts of the text, which I desperately wanted to see developed, so I persevered.

 

For example, I wanted to see the Scavengers, a group who are clearly representative of poor, racialised communities, explored in more depth. The Scavengers are driven to feed on rotting or otherwise substandard meat and are labelled as ‘savages’ by the general population, their desperation a product of their oppression. Unfortunately, this never happened.

 

After almost DNFing at least 5 times, I finally gave up when I reached a scene that I’d consider a particularly lazy and unnecessary attempt to elicit shock, which served no purpose beyond conveying a message that was already crystal clear.

 

Everyone I know who has read this book has loved it, and I’m so glad that people have been able to find value in it. But for me, it just made me feel gross and annoyed for no reason. I didn’t learn anything new, it didn’t offer me a fresh perspective, and it didn’t tell me anything that hasn’t already been conveyed to me through other media with much more tact.

 

I’m sorry, I might’ve liked TitF a bit more if it focused more on fleshing out than just…flesh. Instead, it felt like Bazterrica needed to punish people because she watched too many graphic vegan documentaries and needed an outlet for the distress they caused.