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Book Reviewed by:Winner of the Uruguayan National Literature Prize for Fiction, the Bartolomé-Hidalgo Fiction Prize, and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Literature Prize.
In a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to understand why her world is falling apart. An algae bloom has poisoned the previously pristine air that blows in from the sea. Inland, a secretive corporation churns out the only food anyone can afford—a revolting pink paste, made of an unknown substance. In the short, desperate breaks between deadly windstorms, our narrator stubbornly tends to her few remaining relationships: with her difficult but vulnerable mother; with the ex-husband for whom she still harbors feelings; with the boy she nannies, whose parents sent him away even as terrible threats loomed. Yet as conditions outside deteriorate further, her commitment to remaining in place only grows—even if staying means being left behind.
An evocative elegy for a safe, clean world, Pink Slime is buoyed by humor and its narrator's resiliency. This unforgettable novel explores the place where love, responsibility, and self-preservation converge, and the beauty and fragility of our most intimate relationships.
The narrative bones of Pink Slime may be those of a straightforward family drama, but Trías enjoys wrapping them in some meaty experimentation. Like the eponymous pink paste, however, the philosophical musings and stylistic flair that pepper her writing are only somewhat nourishing. The novel may touch on all the weightiest contemporary concerns—environmental disaster, democratic backsliding, class inequality—but it's the knotty personal relationships that give it such a strong emotional core. Trías is expert in drawing out the paradoxes of these relationships, stretching the web of love and resentment, obligation and self-preservation in which the narrator finds herself caught. That society is collapsing seems almost incidental...continued
Full Review
(714 words)
(Reviewed by Alex Russell).
Fernanda Trías's Pink Slime takes its title from the nickname of Meatrite, a fictional meat paste developed by the government to combat food shortages during an environmental collapse. Although set in an imagined near future, Trías's Meatrite could easily be inspired by the ultra-processed foods (UPFs) that have come to dominate the 21st-century diet. Once seen as a way to cheaply feed a growing population, UPFs are now linked to an increasing number of chronic conditions, such as asthma and type 2 diabetes.
The roots of UPFs can be traced back to the Great Depression and Second World War, when circumstances dictated populations be fed as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Highly processed products like Spam—...
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