Tender Is The Flesh is a second novel by Agustina Bazterrica. I thought I had scrapped the bottom with my first and flawed novel, gather the weeds, about the genocide of people with disabilities. In her novel, she created a society transited to predators and preys of humans because of the virus wiping out domestic animals like cattle and pigs. The cannibalistic novel showed the main character, Marcos Armando, as a married man who is separated from his wife, Cecilia, a strained relationship with his sister, Marisa because of her twins who are spoiled brats, and a father who is slowly descending into dementia and is living at a nursing home.

Her brilliance in writing Tender Is The Flesh is creating humane people, some with sympathy and others that you can’t help wishing that those mean-spirted people could have been carved into “special meat.” She even made some of the characters tragic and even if they consumed human flesh, you could not help but wish them the best.

She showed the all too human of the terrorized creature that Marcos named Jasmine and at the heart rending horrifying end, found the reason why Marcos had treated her so kindly in the course of the story. The ending was similar to the abrupt ending of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Except more violent and nastier within violence and the nastiness of Aldous Huxley.

Also the cover design by Alex Merto is simply brilliant.