“Mary Carminum” was my favorite story in the collection.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I was so excited when I saw this come available! Tender is the flesh was a great, well thought out story. I have more trouble getting in to short story collections, but there were a few gems throughout. I think the sense of space, and finding unique moments in mundane settings is one of this author's strong suits. A unique set of stories. I'm looking forward to their next full length novel! ( )

Where do you go after writing a novel in which humans are bred and kept for meat? I wondered after having read Argentinian writer Bazterrica’s unsubtle attack on what she strongly believes is the amorality of meat eating. This collection of twenty (quite) short stories mostly focuses on the effects of abuse of women and children. Human bodies are again cut, sliced, stabbed and dismembered. Inhabiting a body is a dangerous state of affairs in Bazterrica’s fictions, especially if one is female, and young. As with her novel I found it quite uneven. There was considerably more use of abstract symbolism, which typically didn’t work for me. But some of the stories I enjoyed:

*)”A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound”. The opening story. A woman on her patio is nearly hit by the falling body of a man jumping to his death. Her self-satisfied life is instantly as smashed as the man’s body in what I read as an example of the movement of an individual along the spectrum of despair and awareness of Self as analyzed in Kierkegaard’s “The Sickness Unto Death”.

*)”Perfect Symmetry”. A prisoner is targeted for death by another inmate who for some reason enjoys this power with impunity. The guards allow him a final wish, which is to cook a fine meal. The description of the deliberate and focused care he takes in his culinary preparations sparkles in the contrast to the oppressive atmosphere of approaching death he awaits. The final detail of the story is quite poetic and powerful.

*)”Mary Carminum”. I thought this was shaping up to be a slasher revenge on a couple of lame guys who make a game of sexually exploiting women. Oh no, it’s far, far weirder. What forces have taken possession of these men? I can’t say, and it intrigued me. ( )

I'm not entirely sure.....um....dnf ( )

A rare example of well done second person. ( )