Pink Slime (2024) by Fernanda Trias

 Book Review

Pink Slime (2024)

by Fernanda Trias

   I confused Uruguayan author Fernanda Trias with Fernanda Melchor (Mexican), but I read Pink Slime because it is another excellent example of the wave of speculative/realist fiction emerging out of Latin America.  I could name a half dozen books just from my blog- Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez (Argentina), is one of my favorite books of this decade.  Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird (2023) by Agustina Bazterrica, who also wrote Tender is the Flesh, one of my favorite books from 2019.  There is You Glow in the Dark (2024)by Liliana Colanzi, and I'm sure, others that I've missed.  These books exist alongside their non-speculative counterparts- authors like the aforementioned Melchor, and Brazilian Ana Paula Maia.

  I was so anxious to read Pink Slime that I read it on my phone, on the native reader for the Libby library app, which was a major sacrifice.  Pink Slime takes place in an unnamed Latin American or possibly Southern European nation- there is a coast line, towns further inland and geographic features of the city that evoke specific cities- la rambla (Barcelona) and barrio alta (Lisbon) but appear to be used generically here.  The narrator and protagonist is unnamed, working as a caretaker for Mauro who has the syndrome where he never feels full from eating and is essentially constantly hungry.  Mauro's wealthy parents are absent for a reason unexplained, and the narrator is housebound as the coastal city is beset by a killing red wind that flays humans alive after infection.  Respite comes in the form of a thick, bad smelling fog that allows transit around the increasingly deserted city.  Food, the pink slime of the title, comes from a chicken processing plant, newly constructed amid dwindling food supplies.

   Pink Slime is a novel of pre-apocalyptic survival and I found it compelling, worth picking up from the library for sure.