Tender is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica
Tender is the Flesh, the award-winning translation of Cadáver Exquisito, drops the reader into a world with no animals – dead from some kind of virus – and a society in which cannibalism has become part and parcel of humanity’s daily existence. Just as the animals before them, humans are now being raised for food, and Bazterrica describes all of this with horrifying simplicity and straightforwardness. When the protagonist, Marco, is ‘gifted’ a woman meant to be eaten, he has to decide what to do with her, and his choices and what he makes of them seem to be a profound thought experiment in which Bazterrica wants to show the reader that the so-called worst side of humanity is not as extraneous from us as we would like to think. On a side note, be sure not to read this while eating, trust me.
Animal, Lisa Taddeo
Animal’s protagonist is a woman still nursing the injuries incurred in childhood who leaves New York for California after her married boyfriend kills himself in front of her. She is off to search for the one person she thinks could help her – her half sister – who doesn’t know she exists, and who she is half thinking of murdering. Death presents as a sharp undertone to this novel – the protagonist is surrounded by it and mentally consumed by it – hers, others, and especially those of her parents, who died when she was just 10 years old. Taddeo had already proven herself to be skilled in the language of women’s trauma with Three Women, and in Animal further employs these skills, providing readers with a protagonist whose struggle to heal is as realistic and human as it is recognizable.