on
3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Rating: 3.5/5
Pages: 224
Started: 6 May 2024
Finished: 10 May
Summary:
After a disease ran rampant, contaminating animals and killing every human who ate them, humanity turned to a new source of protein: special meat, the name that governments and butchers alike used to refer to human flesh, grown and slaughtered for human consumption.
Marcos is a manager at an Argentinian slaughterhouse that deals solely in special meat. Though he hates his boss, hates the cruelty of his job, hates the government whom he believes fabricated the disease as a hoax and a moneymaker, Marcos is good at his job. What's more, it distracts him from his father's illness, his wife's separation, and the haunting memories of the death of his infant child. Though he is miserable, Marcos's life is a sustainable one.
Then a female head--not a woman; this one has been bred and branded purely as a source of protein--is gifted to him. Though at first infuriated and unsure what to do with her, as Marcos he begins to spend more time with her, he can feel his very world beginning to shift.
Thoughts:
This was a really solid dystopian novel. I liked the world building; the special meat industry was well thought-out, and there was just enough feeling of conspiracy for the dystopia to feel real, but not so much that the story got bogged down in politics. Marcos was also an interesting character, since the tired reluctant depressed man who wants to be a father is not a common point of view for narration, and his voice was very strong in the novel.
The plot of this book was nothing new, though. Unhappy working man trapped in the system he is suspicious of (but not suspicious enough to leave on his own) has his life upended by a strange woman who doesn't quite fit into the system. Of course, some catalyst is necessary in a story like this, but the helpless and beautiful woman as that catalyst has been done before. The woman was really interesting though, since she as a character existed as this horrifying blend of meat and surrogate and lover and mother--usually authors don't blend all of those things into one, and the effect was just as horrifying as I think it was meant to be.
Everything in the book was horrifying, really--especially the descriptions of the slaughterhouse--and the effectiveness of that sense of horror speaks to Bazterrica's talent as a writer. That being said, I was not immersed enough in this book to recommend it highly to anyone except those looking for a fresh, horrifying, and dystopian read.