This is a well-written gruesome book filled with unimaginable atrocities of the worst possible kind. I don’t say this lightly or with exaggeration. It is meant to disturb you and make you think about a few things.

It tells the tale of a world ravaged by a virus that infected all of the animals. Yes, all of them apparently. This then makes it super easy for the people in power to have all of the animals destroyed and to create a new source of protein for the people lucky enough to still be deemed people. The rest are raised as food which they package and market all nicely and call “special meat” and the “people” fall in line soon enough, acclimating to this new dietary change without thinking too much about what they’re actually ingesting. This supposedly also takes care of population control, immigration, poverty, probably even climate issues and keeps those in power wealthy and powerful.  I cannot even tell you how disturbing this entire thing is. A decade ago I read a book called “Meat” by Joseph D’Lacey and it was very similar in premise to this one and it put me off eating most meat forever. This one may very well do the same for you.

Initially, I felt sorry and compassion, even, for our narrator Marcos. He works at the processing plant and he seems sympathetic enough of a fellow. He despises what he now has to do for a living but his dad is dying of dementia and he needs to pay for his care. His wife has left him alone to deal with SO much grief. He’s very sympathetic initially but then he receives a gift and I saw all too clearly where this was headed. He eventually makes several choices that made me despise him as much as every other repulsive person in this story and that’s all I’ll say about him.

Tender Is The Flesh is the bleakest kind of story. It pulls no punches from the get-go. You’ll know exactly what you’re getting yourself into and you can either immediately run or suffer through it all as I did. I don’t think there’s any middle ground. Once this book got its hooks in me I had to finish it. I had to witness every cruelty. I had to know how it would all end. And I deserved every terrible thing the author dished out because I kept going. But it did give me one of the best lines I’ve read recently: 

“When someone smiles, they’re showing their skeleton.”

The writing is blunt and to the point. It doesn’t luxuriate in its bloody deeds. It states them as facts. This is just the way the world is now and I think that choice makes the book so much more terrifying. It’ll make you sad and it’ll make you angry and it will disgust you. If you’re up for it, go get yourself a copy but don’t come back here blaming me for it!

CW:

Basically all of them, rape, infant death, animal death, animal cruelty, suicide, depression, cannibalism