October Spotlight: Tender is the Flesh

October is my favorite month of the year because it includes my favorite holiday, Halloween! I am a fan of all things spooky all throughout the year, but many people join me in the spook-fest during October. Stephen King changed my literary life (and likely broke my brain a bit) when I picked up a used copy of It when I was 15 years old. It took me seven years to finish the book because I kept getting too scared and burying it under my bed for months at a time before becoming brave enough to pick it up again. It still remains one of my favorite books of all time.

So to kick off October, I’d like to spotlight the most disturbing book I’ve read in a while: Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. I read the English version, translated from its original Spanish by Sarah Moses, and it was a quick, but gruesome read. Definitely a nice one to kick off a creep-tastic season.

Tender is the Flesh is a dystopian novel set in the (near?) future where animal meat is tainted and no longer a viable food source, so humans are bred as an alternative. That’s right, in this new world, people eat people (soylent green, anyone?) and the class system has escalated to the top being rich and the bottom being a food source.

This book isn’t for the squeamish, but if you can handle the mental images of armless, legless humans being bred (they are amputated so the mother cannot intentionally abort the fetus) and humans being slaughtered like cattle, it’s an interesting take on our consumption habits and committment to eating meat… against all odds.