// Foreword
Picture it: Canada, 2024.
It’s summertime, and I’m enjoying the sweltering heat on my front porch while slurping up a rapidly melting orange juice popsicle. This is when it hits me: I’m a complete moron. I haven’t read a book in years.
Something in me changes, something primal. Like a switch being flipped, I immediately enter my “book era.” A need for words builds up in my stomach. It scratches and tears with a ferocious hunger, a need to consume. Oh wait, no, I’m just having a gallstone attack.
Still, I want to read more books.
It begins with audiobooks during a home renovation, but quickly morphs into an obsession with buying paper books. Classics, modern books, every and all genres. I look at cute Instagram posts of people’s bookshelves that are positively aesthetic.
Sometime that Autumn, a cheeky little book stands out to me. It has a striking cover. After a brief glimpse at the summary, I though, “Oh yeah, this is LITERATURE.” On the wishlist it went. A few months later, I’m back at the same book store with my wife doing some festive holiday shopping when there it is: the book.
“Golly gee my love, I sure would like to read this one someday,” I say as I bat my eyelashes and tap the cover of the book. Two weeks later, I find that very book wrapped in Santa Claus paper under the Christmas tree. I fall to my knees and celebrate, clutching the book greedily in my grubby little hands.
I don’t read the premise out loud because my wife says, “it’s horrible.”
My brother takes the book. “Oh my god,” he mutters. “What the hell,” his girlfriend utters under her breath.
I grin ear to ear. This is a freak book and I will indulge in it, bathe in the freak. Blow bubbles in the horror. Suds myself with the soap of repulsion. Okay, you get it.
Today we explore the horrors of human indulgence. Join me, in Tender is the Flesh.
Content warning: This book and review discuss cannibalism.
Contains spoilers for all of Tender is the Flesh.
// Tender is the Flesh
This is a challenging book. It’s challenging because it presents you with a world that has a very different moral baseline than we do. Characters behave in ways that are deplorable by our sense of right and wrong, but in their world, would not get a second glance.
With that said, Tender is the Flesh surpassed my expectations. Not just in the quality of the writing (and by extension the translation, since the book was originally written in Spanish), but in what it was actually about. The basic premise is this: a virus has spread through all the animals of the world, killing anyone who eats them. As a result, cannibalism has been legalized. This process was called, “The Transition.”
This was all I knew going in. Visions of maniacs running around a post-apocalyptic wasteland with comical pieces of human meat shaped like a turkey leg filled my mind. Think Fallout or Mad Max. But this is not what the book is like. Not at all.
What we actually have here is a very structured civilization around eating human meat, or “special meat,” as they have come to call it. Instead, think 1984.
The ones who are eaten are processed much in the same way as cattle is in our world, horrors and all. They aren’t called humans, however, they are called “head.” The process is excruciatingly detailed, from the breeding to the shipping to the slaughter and finally, the sale of the meat.
They are not given names, as it’s illegal to eat someone with a first and last name.
What makes this more than just a PETA-esque anti-meat book is that it’s not really saying you should stop eating meat. It’s pointing a finger at the indulgences in human behaviours, and their cost. The idea is fleshed out extensively, which we will explore. It critiques much more than the meat production industry, although that is a central pillar because of the premise of the book.
Our main character, Marcos, is a higher member at one of the more prestigious slaughterhouses. A middle man between his place of work and other businesses in the industry.
His infant son has recently passed away, his father is rotting away in a seniors home, his wife moved out, and his sister is a bitch. To top it off, he dislikes eating human meat. He still loves animals – as creatures, not to eat. But he cannot say any of that, of course.
He’s having a tough time.
The balance between this horrible world and Marcus, a relatively grounded individual navigating it, is key to this story not being simply a shock-value horror book.
// Steady is the hand that cuts the bone
This story does a good job of providing violence and horror cranked up to 11, but also makes it work, because that is the point. It supposed to be over the top and grotesque.
The book will make you cringe. It will horrify you. Then, as it sits, it will sink in that these atrocities on display aren’t so different from real life. They are all obfuscated, alternate-reality versions of cruelties and indulgencees we commit every day.
All that to say, it’s not blindly gruesome. Most of the violence in the story is clinical – mechanical. This is contrasted with a few instances of actual brutality, which by comparison feel much worse, but when broken down matter-of-factly, aren’t.
The book is nuanced with its heavy-handedness. Two primary examples that come to mind are the following scenes: One, we see a pack of wealthy individuals hunting another human for sport. If a celebrity has come upon hard times and are in debt, they can elect to be hunted for sport. If they survive, a wealthy man will pay their debts.
The rock star in question is of course caught, and we are treated to a scene where Marcos is forced to join the hunting party as the rockstar’s body is prepared and eaten in extravagant fashion. The penis is eaten as the hunter believes it’s an aphrodisiac. The head is kept as a trophy.
The second is a scene in a lab that often orders Head from Marcos’ company. He is made to tour it every time, so the specific demands of the lead technician can be fully met. He sees Head being put through all sort of torment and experiments, under the guise of research helping the greeter good.
These scenes of course call to mind images of hunting rare game for sport, and animal experimentation on chimps and the like. Marcos, like the reader (presumably) detests these situations.
It’s the delicate carving of the brutality in the story from the subtle character work (which will be discussed more in-depth soon) that keeps everything in balance. The two feel like separate beasts born of the same circumstance.
Marcos finds himself in many different relatable human situations. Situations that feel like they should no longer exist in this new world, but they do. These are often results of interactions he has with his friends and family. It’s these – often sad – moments that compliment the horror and keep Tender of the Flesh grounded despite its terrific extravagance.
// Yet he who eats, consumes the flesh
I’ll talk about the characters for a moment. Specifically, his sister Marisa.
His sister, Marisa, holds a wake after their father passes away later in the book. Despite never visiting him or caring for him at all, she holds it to maintain a certain social status and garner sympathy from her acquaintances. At this party she serves Special Meat served in a method inspired by the Chinese method of torture, “death by a thousand cuts.” Of course the meat is harvested from a live individual she is raising on her own.
The concept of torturing a person to feed and impress your middle-upper-class friends makes one wonder just how many people in our world who are obsessed with true-crime podcasts would behave like this given the chance. Instagram posts with vibey colour grading of a human arm decorated with cheese and greens at a party. #Gournet.
Marcos sees his sister for what she is, and dislikes being around her. She represents what I think is the largest group of people targeted in the book. They wilfully engage in all kinds of fucked up terrors because, “it’s just what everyone else does.” They can very easily pretend that just behind the curtain isn’t brutality and horror, if that means not slightly inconveniencing themselves.
She is but one of a handful of characters who all partake in this world in various ways as a parallel for real life.
To us, the things happening are shocking. To Marcos, while he dislikes them, they are simply a regular aspect of life he wishes would go away. If someone started processing people into meat, removing the limbs of pregnant women so they couldn’t harm their children, or destroying the vocal cords of masses of people so they wouldn’t learn to talk – we would shut that down immediately. It’s horrific!
But can we really say with certainty that they are more cruel than what takes place in actual commercial slaughterhouses? If you’ve seen or read about what goes on there, you would be hard-pressed. We see this as worse because it’s happening to people. We see it as worse because we’ve normalized the horrors of this book happening to other species all the time in real life.
Marcos reacts to human slaughter much in the same way we might to, say, cows. Would most people say they like how cows are treated in these situations? No. But are most of us quitting meat, or doing anything at all to help improve the industry? Also, no.
Obviously, the book takes things to the most shocking extremes they can, perhaps at times even airing on hyperbolic. But the metaphor is complete. It illustrated how people will adapt to a baseline, no matter how cruel that baseline is, if everyone else is on board; if the people in charge tell them they are right.
It’s this mundane horror that rides the baseline of human expectation that is the hardest to break free from.
// Will exist, truly, ever alone
Finally, let’s talk about one key event that is crucial to Marcos’ storyline and his character. He is gifted a female Head from one of their breeding centres. Handed off to him like a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine with a corporate holiday card.
He begins to care for her and eventually, after naming her Jasmine, commits one of the worst crimes you can commit in this world. He “enjoys the Head.” Which, as you might imagine, is the mandated term they use for when someone has intercourse with one. It is punishable by death in the municipal slaughterhouses. The female Head becomes pregnant.
Although she cannot speak or understand language, over the next few months Marcos tries to teach her some things. He brings her into house and teaches her how to bathe, dress, and even watch TV.
Although the circumstances that led to this outcome carry about as many red flags as you can imagine by our standards, in this world, it’s the first time we see someone actually care about the Head like this. It’s the first time one is treated like a person.
Marcos can never really express himself to anyone. The only thing he can share his true heart and soul with is Jasmine. And of course, his bond with her can never be shared with anyone.
He suffers the slow loss of his father alone. He processes this by hanging out in an abandoned zoo that his father took him to when he was young.
Marcos spends a lot of time alone, reminiscing on the better days of the past.
This book does something very interesting with the way it portrays societal judgment. Our expectations and norms have been given a big, fat, reverse-UNO card. In Tender is the Flesh, giving in to your indulgences is acceptable. Expected, even. Contrast this to our world where indulgences, especially in something taboo, will result in a very negative reaction from those around you.
Marcos holds opinions and feelings that are more in line with what we might consider relatable by today’s real-world standards. Yet he is at odds with his world, both morally and legally.
The crux of his arc comes right at the end of the book. So, spoilers.
The time has come and Jasmine goes into labour. Marcos can sense something is wrong, so he calls his estranged wife who is a nurse to help. After an initial judgment, she helps deliver the baby and it survives. After the pain of losing their first son, they both think the baby is beautiful. They declare it to be theirs. They rejoice.
Now having the object of his desire restored to him, Marcos kills Jasmine. His care for her seemingly evaporated now that he has his wife and child back. Just like that, the one character we thought to be carrying our moral compass threw it away. The allure of what he truly wanted was too strong. He chose to take happiness for himself.
Did he ever care for her along the way? Was this a spur of the moment decision? We’ll never know.
It presents the reader with questions: when the safety rails are removed, do we stop pretending? Do we discard our disguises of orderly, caring people? Or is this simply a fantasy exploring a twisted “what-if” scenario?
I for one, hope we don’t ever find out. Or do it?
// Afterword
No, I don’t.
Also, here’s a fun fact, the genre this book belongs to is called Splatterpunk. I had never heard of it before. The basic definition seems to be violent depictions of gore and violence, as well as having a counterculture spin.
While I see how it may technically meet the criteria, I don’t think Tender is the Flesh really fits the vibe of what you might consider a Splatterpunk book. But, that’s half the fun of breaking things down into really specific genres – the arguments about what counts as what.
It’s ultimately a fruitless endeavour, but something I’ve always found interesting.
Anyway, if you like this kind of challenging (read: fucked up) story, check out my other review of Fire Punch. It’s a beautiful piece of work and if you like this you will probably enjoy that.
Now, who wants some barbecue?
