Tender is the Flesh is the Most Disturbing Horror Novel Ever Written
I've barely read this novel during this week again, and I have to say, this novel is still the most brutal horror novel I have ever read. I had read this book 2 years ago, and it still continues to disturb me in more ways than one. We follow the story of a random dude named Marcos, who is struggling to live in a dystopian world, where it's now normal to be a cannibal. An infection has wiped out all animals, and now the world can no longer eat animal meat to survive. The government gets the idea to switch to human meat, to feed the world, and it now becomes the new norm.
Marcos works at a factory where he helps to distribute human meat, and while he appears stable to his co -workers, his personal life is a nightmare. His father is now in a nursing home, his sister has given herself fully to the dystopian world, his wife had to go live with her mother after the death of their son, and then he finds himself stuck in a dilemma when he is given a human woman as a gift, to consume.
Instead of eating her like he is supposed to, he chooses to do what is now considered to be one of the worst crimes in his new world. He falls in love with her, and she ends up pregnant with his child.
Despite his temporary happiness, he continues to experience more and more awful things in his personal life. His father passes away in his sleep at the nursing home, the one person that represented what life used to be like years before the world fall into darkness. He cremates his father, refusing to give up his body to be eaten. He goes to the funeral service hosted by his sister, who does this to look good in front of her neighbors. He decides to leave his father's ashes somewhere and puts sand into the urn as a way to retaliate what his sister stands for.
He is eventually able to go home after an awful day, and he finds out that his girlfriend is about to give birth. He calls his wife in a panic, asking her to help. She arrives, and while she expresses heartbreak over choosing a 'piece of meat' over her, she offers to help the woman give birth to her child. Marcos and his wife are happy to hold this child, and they completely ignore the woman, who is reaching for her child. Marcos beats her to death, angering his wife, because she wanted more children. Marcos tells his wife that she looked like an animal, and needed to put down.
After the ending of the novel, I no longer felt sorry for Marcos. It was already hard to root for him beforehand, since he was a willing participant in this disturbing dystopian world, but that ending proves that he is like everyone else around him.
He got his happiness back in a messed-up way, and killing that poor woman was the final nail in the coffin for Marcos, as a sign that he has fully given himself up to the evil plaguing his new world.
This novel is so hard to get through, it's the only horror novel that feels like a challenge to read.
I can see why this book was considered to be one of the best horror novels ever written, because this book had the balls to expose readers to a world that I hope will never exist.
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