This is just an eco chamber where i can talk about what i am reading at the moment. I'm a lazy slow reader that reads like maybe one book a month. I may reblog aesthetic stuff or cool quotes.
so wildly obnoxious when you agree with the starting point of someone's stance only for them to hard turn into things you DON'T agree with and now you have to defend the thing that was originally annoying you
"too many authors in the current market are focusing on selling 'spice' instead of telling interesting stories"
"oh yeah, i agree. i started reading one that i heard a lot about and it just wasn't-"
"and it's all of these women reading their fucking mommy porn out in public like FREAKS"
*through gritted teeth* "people should be allowed to read whatever they want, and actually these books should be left alone and you should shut up about it"
Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
Then one day he’s given a a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.
VOTE : ★★★★
TW : CANNIBALISM, RAPE, INFERTILITY
REVIEW UNDER THE CUT
I have seen many people lump this book along with other works of extreme horror and I personally do not agree with that classification. It is absolutely a work that depicts horror, and there have been many points throughout the novel that have forced me to put the book down and take a lap otherwise I would feel sick, but it never felt gratuitous. It definitely will give you a shock, but the way these moments are depicted lacks the crude edginess that I find more common in splatter punk, and are instead introduced through mechanical, cold and detached lenses. There is judgment, there is a bloody description. But it's not visceral (pun not intended).
Marcos Tejo, our protagonist, lives through this world with what I would call a double life. On the outside he depicts himself as this cold, detached, and perfectly adjusted man. Someone who has gone through hardships sure, but he intentionally isolates himself from the rest of the world. After all, what's the point of creating human connection when the whole concept of what it means to be human and what allows you to be seen as one instead of just meat, is getting more and more blurry by the day?
On the inside, Marcos is a cynical, judgmental individual, who seems to hold himself to quite the higher moral ground. He takes care of his demented father, he gives his grieving wife space, he is a diligent worker despite hating his job, he is against The Transition and has turned to veganism.
And at first glance like many, you look at this and say "Ah he is a good man. He is a kind person. He is just trapped in these circumstances."
Is he?
The answer, if you pay attention, has been given to us since the beginning. In the first chapter, as Marcos tells us about the messed up world we are now plunged into, he talks to us about how his father reacted to this horrifying change, along with many others : He went mad.
And really isn't that truly what someone who has strong integrity and morals would do in a situation like this? Go insane? Cry out at the atrocity? Refuse to accept it as a new normality?
We are introduced to another character that went mad, one of Marcos workers who we are told is a learned man despite the blue collar job he does. He is also on the front line of this horror. And he can't accept it, ending up with taking his life.
Marcos too is against the change and is horrified by how quickly it all happened. And in weak protest he refuses to eat meat. But he still shows up at work, at the slaughter house, and he doesn't just show up, he is an integral part of this job. He works at one of the most prestigious slaughter houses, and he handles everything with great efficiency. He excuses this by repeating that he has to take care of the sick father, something that he wouldn't need to do if his sister which he is extremely critical of, would help. He also appreciates the job because it gives him something else to think about since he is separated with his wife and has recently lost his son. And he keeps piling up excuses to justify his silence and compliancy, while spitting venom against any other cog of this meat chopping machine.
Especially the women.
He can be scared by the men. He can be disturbed by the men, he pities them, he understands them, he can be harsh but never unforgiving. Even with the worst of the worst he looks at them and accepts it that this is their nature.
The women don't receive the same leniency. He despises his sister, who has perfectly assimilated herself into this world, although more than one scene makes it obvious she is clawing at reality with all she has. The second his father starts to degenerate, he becomes venomous towards the nurse that for years has taken care of him, tossing her aside since she is no longer needed. He assaults Spamel, stating more than once that he wants to hurt and break her, envious of her ability to shut out everything and everyone, turning, twisting what she has once done with him in a humiliation ritual. Disrespecting his grieving wife calling her broken ( which i read as him referring to both her mental state and her inability to carry out successful pregnancy or give him an healthy child) and when Jasmin appears in his life, he stops trying to reach for her, stop hoping she will return and actually refers to her at his ex wife in a single moment towards the end accusing her of having taken too long and that she couldn't possibly expect him to wait for her forever. Not now that he has what he wanted.
At the start, before the second half of the book, I believed, stupidly, that this would turn into an almost father daughter relationship, that he would care for her and give her back her humanity. But the second I read the phrase "She is 8 months pregnant" I knew what this was about. And it becomes increasingly more obvious as time goes. He treats her like a pet, drawing a number of parallels between how he treated his dogs and other animals and how he threatens her. The moment that consolidated this to me was when he brings her under the three, mirroring an anecdote he shared about his two dogs, he keeps repeating that she is incapable of thinking. Never really giving her the chance to be seen as human.
Only when Jasmine has done what he needed her to do (give him a son) does drop the mask (And welcomes back his wife, because he needs her to be a mother to his child and a nurse) and disposes of Jasmine, knowing she has become too self aware.
Because in a world where everything is permitted if you just use the right words for it, why can't he take what he wants? He was "against the system" but really he just needed to find a way to exploit it in his favor.
The language in this book is a crucial theme, it is reiterated multiple times, to the point that the language becomes a character. We aren't described how a new character looks but we are told every time about how they speak, what their words sound, feel and taste like. They are people because they can talk. Jasmine can't, so… The language around the new industry of the meat changed to obfuscate the violence, censoring reality, allowing for an easy trick to look something in the face and still not give it a name. It is reminiscent to me of the way people have been self censoring in today's social media, saying "Unalive" instead of Killing or "Suer Side" instead of Suicide, "Grape or SA" instead of Rape, "PDF File" instead of Pedophile. Words that are considered icky or jarring...when that's exactly what they are meant for. Words used to hide the horror, as the book says. Making us insensitive to the violence, making it "Easier to digest" (second pun not intended).
And in the end Tejo still uses that clean censored language because he knows that the consequences are… we don't know exactly. It's treated more as a social cue than a crime. Like farting in public. .
We are all Marcos Tejo when we choose to be silent and compliant.
When you look away from the news, when you redirect that political conversation, when you act un surprised at the new conflict that has blown up, look at your plate :what are you eating?
The book also makes it obvious as to how they went so far without complications. The first to die and be eaten were the undesirable. The immigrants, the homeless, the ones living at the edges of society who no one would look for. And that opens the Pandora box of "what is the limit?"
The criminals don't go to prison animore, the go to the slaughter house. People immolate themselves through an holy ritual that no one believes in. If you walk out at the wrong our you can disappear, no point in looking for you. You are now meat.
Meat is meat.
This world is a boiling pot and everyone is a frog sitting in it not realizing that their time is running out. We see it with the attack of the camion by the necrofages, and everyone's immediate fear is that they will learn to donit again and it will become a spread issue. But it reflects in Marcos who so easily tosses away all his moralism the second he sees a chance for personal gain. The new generations are growing insensitive and alienated, playing a game where they guess what they would taste like. How long before a brother eats another, and a new, more horrifying myth of Able and Cain is created?
Final considerations and conclusion:
An element of this book that was inescapable for me was the reminder that this has happened. There has been more than once a time in history where people stopped being people, where the language around them changed and their personhood was stripped. It happened with the enslavement of black people in America, and the encampment of Jewish people under nazi Germany. We read this book and see it as unthinkable, we look at the past and look at it as a barbaric uneducated and ignorant version of the world, we are better now, we know better. And this book is just a book. A horrible take that once you close the page will disappear.
The death penalty is still in use in 55 countries.
Women are being stripped of their rights, reproductive and social ones.
i think it goes without saying but is still worth noting, my beef with booktok literature is 100% about the quality. i LOVE housewives reading weird porn. i wish they would do it more
Speaking of books it's been a while since I've seen one of these posts going around & I'm curious so everyone could you tell me what you are reading rn in the tags please
I have not had any serious book goals for the whole year (which was honestly great), but I am now at 99 books read and getting to 100 would be sooooo satisfying.
Hiiii i know i haven't posted anything in forever, but guess what?
I MOVED OUT!! 🎉🎉
THAT'S RIGHT! i have my own place and it's been an adventure. I'm slowly starting to settle down but boy things just keep happening to me.
Anyway as you can guess i haven't had much time to read, especially because i didn't hav6any books to read at all. I finally got them again and i will try my best to get back on track!
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist
Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?
RAITING: ★★★
REVIEW UNDER THE CUT:
This was a very very hard book to read. Partially because of the themes of this book and the events in it are terribly real and concrete especially considering the last few years since 2020, with all the numerous conflicts that have been popping up. But also because this isn't the tale of a strong mother fighting against the circumstances to bring her children to safety. Eilish doesn't fight, nor she run. She remains frozen in place by fear and anger and because of that she looses everything. I can't and do not want to judge Eilish despite her being a fictional character, but her motivation and reasoning, despite how...counteractive they might be, are unfortunately very realistic and can be understood and that is what makes this an uncomfortable book. There aren't gruesome scenes or overly detailed descriptions of violence. Everything is seen through this almost poetic and reflective lens. Paul Linch, being he Irish, follows the seemingly Irish literary tradition of not using speech quotes or common punctuation ( something that i find very interesting but i couldn't find any explanation as to why, so if anyone knows please feel free to explain.) it crated this sense of flow state where everything merges together. The chapters are long but broken in many small vignettes of an everyday life that slowly goes falling apart. We don't start the book with a Coup or a revolution. But neither is an already established government. It's that awkward stage in a dictatorship where you can see the real underbelly of the beast beginning to show. What started as a momentary solution becomes a temporary necessity till it turns in to a fully stated law. At the very beginning of the book we are introduced to a thought: Is reality real or just a fantasy? Reality is created on the bases of laws, laws that we all believe to be sturdy and indestructible. But when those laws get changed, twisted, or erased, what happens to reality, to your every day life? Are you really awake? Do you really have a choice? Just think of what happened in our lives in the past 7 years. Things that a decade ago were unthinkable now are concrete and we deal with them every day. That theme remains present throughout the book, moved by two factors: Eilish dreams and Louis ( her father)'s Alzheimer. Eilish after the arrest of her husband is tormented by dreams, nightmares, and slowly by the end of the book, her mind is completely tethered by the trauma where she struggles to see true and false. Louis similarly since the beginning of the book has been deteriorating, his reality has stopped to be that of everyone's else long ago, constantly stuck between present and past and future. He still manages to heed some solid advices to Eilish, but she never takes them seriously. What was most frustrating was Eilish obtuse fake optimism "Everything will return to normal soon." Even when they are under fire and bombardment she insists that things will soon change. Only when towards the end of the book, she thinks she's about to die, does she realize the fault of her thinking.
By the end of the book, Eilish lost her husband and her two male sons. There wasn't much to be done about her husband, he got unjustly incarcerated and he is never seen again in the book. That event becomes the ball and chain that keeps Eilish anchored to place. Despite the many opportunities, the many people that urge her to leave, she makes the unreasonable decision of staying, putting at risk the life of her children. Speaking of the children, they all have perfectly valid reactions to the situation. Ben is just a toddler, but Mark, the eldest, almost gets drafter and decides that instead of running away and hide he wants to stay and fight, he wants to take revenge on the people who have taken his father. Molly the second child, initially is also on the fighting stance, but slowly she becomes empty and depressed, loosing herself, Eilish still doesn't take any chances of leaving, continuing to sing this lie that everything will get back to normal. Molly will eventually become much more competent and strong, but only once she realizes that her mother is not reliable anymore and she has to take charge. A very hard thing to do at 15. Eilish says that she sees the moment her daughter becomes an adult, when she has to leave to take Bailey to the hospital, leaving Molly with the baby.
Speaking of Bailey, he might be the most heartbreaking character. He is 13. The world is falling apart around him and he doesn't even understand why, he doesn't know what is happening and he is so full of anger that he doesn't know where to put, so he takes it out on his mother, accusing her of everything that is happening to them. An in a way i can't fault him beca Eilish is responsible for how things end. She was selfish and a coward, she hid behind a lie to comfort herself and didn't think about the bigger picture, she looked straight up at a thunderstorm approaching and still refused to believe rain would come.
The ending was...it can feel anticlimactic, but as someone who lives in the mediterranean, a sea that has become a tomb for thousands of refugees trying to escape, the second i saw the two inflatable boats being offered to cross from north Ireland to the uk....i knew. I know the will not make it. Eilish is surrounded by Cassandras, Prophets that are telling her fair and plain what her decisions will bring her to, but she stubbornly looks the other way. It's a real and cruel book that will definitely sit with me for a long while.
I love annotating books! Wdym I can write little messages abt what’s happening to the main characters and share my silly thoughts ANDD I can give that book to my friends to read so they know what I think abt what’s happening?? THATS SO COOL!! And u can make it look pretty too with pastel highlighters and cute sticky notes!! It’s so fun!! Idk why more people don’t do it :(
So i have been reading The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry , and i'm like 50 pages in and something felt off but i just couldn't out my hands on it, and now after thinking about it i think i know what's the problem here. This book reads like a 30 something year old trying to write from the prospective of a 17 year old. But his 17 year old pov is dated of at least a decade and absolutely incongruous with the experience of a modern 17 year old. It's all very.... 2013 Tumblr. Like if this book came out in that period of time people would be making fancast of Leopold with flowercrouns on his head. Also he is so manic pixie dream boy (degrading) Idk i'll get to page 100 and see how i feel.
When Skott Hicks, ex psychiatrist in retirement, is found dead in his home in a calm residential area of Trenton, covered in bee stings and completely nake, it doesn't take much for the Sheriff Sean Brennan to realize this is a case out of his depts, especially after realizing that the letter he had recieved that very morning, with one of the Canti from the great italian opera of Dante Alighieri "The Divine Comedy" , matches the state of the body. It's up to Francesca Martini, talente profiler of the FBI and professor Jonathan Corso to detangle the web of clues left behind by the killer baptized as Minosse.
RATING: 2.5 stars
TW: Discussion of Pedophilia
REVIEW WITH SPOILERS BELOW
The first word that comes to mind about this book is "Wooden".
Not because it's set in a forest or it has anything to do with carpenters, but because the prose is as rigid as a piece of wood. It is dry and barren yet somehow manages to say too much at times devolving in to explanations that aren't eased in to the narrative but feel as if the author made a "copy paste" of the definitions of the topic from wikipedia. It's like "story story story *INFORMATION * story story story." I started glazing over it and skipping those moments. The characters are rather flat, the only one that i truly felt compelled to care for and interested about was Derek Blaze and he appeared for 1 chapter. Also the way the characters talk among themselves is soooooooooooo buddy cop style. The person writing this wasn't writing a book but screenplay, and was forced to turn it in to a book because it was easier to see, that's what it feels like, the entire time i was reading this i kept thinking "This would make a better tv show than a book" and i sincerely stand by it because the book is not *bad*, the story is solid, it has some very clever and creative ways to leave details and clues around and the final plot twist was relatively well executed. However i feel like this story was told in the wrong media. The writer's lack of expressiveness leaves a coincise but dry tale that would have been otherwise very intense.
However the story it's not perfect either. There is a massive red herring that torments you through the book and makes it really hard to care because the second Maximilian Cane is introduced you immediately point at him and go "it's him."
I have nothing against red herrings but they have to be treated with caution and caliber. Too little and it feels like everyone is insane to think about this specific theory, too much and you are left wondering why are you even reading the damn book since you already know how it will end. This is a case of the latter, I have struggled to get through the first 3 quarters of this book because i felt as if i knew what the ending would be like: spoiler i was wrong. And i am happy that i was because in the end it payed off, but a lot of writers with less patience than me (and i have very little patience) would drop the book and leave it there without even knowing the truth.
Then i have a bone to pick with the setting. But it's mostly a personal bone, because i *hate* when non american authors, especially italian ones, write a story set in a country they never lived in or have set foot in it (I checked). Everything feels off. The way the characters talk is off, the way they move through the story feels off and it kept taking me out of the story and i kept thinking "This guy based all his ideas on how the FBI and profilers work by watching American tv series." and i really mean it. I can tell that it was set in america solely because a university professor specializing in the Divine Comedy would be superfluous in Italy. I studied it in middle school and i can tell you most of The Inferno by memory.
The plot twist was good but also not. I mean that it makes sense if it wasn't for one detail: Nicolas. Through the entire book he is a marginal character, we have nothing on him we get no characterization at all, he is just the computer guy who has a nice friendship with the protagonist and who's mother is in the hospital with alzimer. So the fact that he was the mastermind was kind of pulled out of someone's ass so to speak. I did like the fact that it was a collaboration between all the victims and not just one killer. But again that Red Herring that was Maximilian kinda messed up the organic evolution of the whole story by hammering hard on it till it gave you no other option. In the last few chapters you do start being like "Wait no that doesn't make sense " but it doesn't give you any other proper context for why it doesn't make sense, there is no final strings that pull together. It's just a jack in the box kind of ending that i think it's very interesting but poorly executed.
Now i did appreciate the themes and how they were handled. I rarely read thrillers from the pov of police and any other kind of government issued agent because most of the time it's obvious cop propaganda (ACAB) so i came into this book skeptic from the beginning. However not only does this book says a massive FUCK YOU to the church, citing all the way they protect their own people when any form of abuse against minors is brought up, obstructing justice all the way through. But also it points out all the way the police itself is part of the problem, through corruption and the willingness to turn a blind eye. Many people think that themes of abuse against minors don't have space in books, but i think that the author handled it very well and very respectfully. The victims didn't feel like caricatures or stereotypes, they all were people that were messed up by what happened to them, some were lucky and found support, others fell down a darker path to cope. Again: Derek Blaze was my absolute favorite, i cried during his chapter.
Las few thoughts and considerations: The whole "Seeing with the eyes of the killer" was such a bunch of bullshit with an absolute lack of research. What Francesca is doing the entire time is just *using her imagination.* Like ok? I can do it too? She has great intuition otherwise but her "Gift" was irrelevant to the plot and was brought up maybe two times. Could have gone without it.
Corso was just a "Connection" character. Aka a character that is important not because of what they offer as a character but because of who they are connected to aka Max.
In the end: Great potential and good foundation, not the right medium to tell thi story. I'll probably give the book away because i don't see myself ever re reading it and i didn't annotate it so yeah. Still a fun read but ehhhhhh.
