Tender is the Flesh Review

Minor Spoilers Ahead
In a dystopian near future all animal meat is mysteriously infected with a deadly virus. Even mild contact, such as a scratch, leads to a painful death for any human on Earth. Tender is the Flesh explores the question of how far people are willing to go to continue to consume meat. The main character, Marcos, is part of the generation that remembers buying, cooking, and eating commercial meats like beef or pork. His thoughts on the Transition and modern society will haunt each reader long after the final page.  
Now Marcos is resigned to his soul crushing, but well paying, job at a slaughterhouse that has been re-purposed to process “special meat.” For anyone with a queasy stomach this book is not for them because the author, Agustina Bazterrica, goes into gut wrenching detail. She describes everything from how the vocal cords have been removed to the assembly line practice of murdering nameless people and even to the public demand for different shades of leather.
Marcos is forced to confront his own feelings about the world he participates in, as several things in his life reach a boiling point all at once. After a client makes a gift of a female “head” he must decide how far his humanity goes. Anyone worried that this is just a grisly book about cannibalism can put those fears to bed, the narrator and extended cast are brought to life so well that you feel as if they are speaking to you. With the author being from Argentina there are a few conventions that surprised me, such as more telling than showing dialogue in the opening of the book. The more I read though the more I realized that the detached words from Marcos were a brilliant way to show how numb he has become to the horror of daily life.
This book is a dark look at how quickly we can normalize our own horrible behavior. However, readers will empathize with Marcos as he struggles with family problems, tries to hold his marriage together, and how to keep giving yourself to a job that might one day eat you alive.  I recommend this book for anyone interested in the darker side of human nature, well-crafted characters, and great writing.