This book was all vibes and very little plot. Sometimes that works for me, and other times it doesn’t. Unfortunately, this one didn’t. I did the audio, which could have been mistake #1, but I’m fairly certain if I’d read it in print I would have struggled to finish. This is a very quiet book, that takes place during a pandemic and follows one woman as she navigates her relationships with her mother and ex-husband, while nannying for a disabled child. The writing is beautiful but ultimately I didn’t get it.

Many thanks to Scriber and NetGalley for this eARC. I really wanted to like this book - it had everything that I wanted. An epidemic, a woman trying to survive, but it just went nowhere. I wasn't entirely sure if the ending was in fact the ending, but there honestly wasn't much of an explanation of the story's conclusion. Not only that, but I wanted to understand more about the origins of the disease and the government's response. I wanted Station 11, but it just wasn't.

It took some fortitude to get into this story as it is not plot driven, and there is little exposition. You just jump into the world as it is and the characters lives as they are. I thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful prose and vivid visceral descriptions of the setting. It is a very bleak story of environmental degradation, abandonment and hunger that left me feeling some type of way!

Loved it! An enthralling, melancholic, brisk novel about a plague. The prose is pitch-perfect.

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley.

A deeply reflective melancholy read, Trias' Pink Slime is made more fascinating in its almost-prophetic parallels to the epidemic/pandemic ills of today. Like her previous novel The Rooftop, there are strong themes of confinement, codependence, the subsequent detriment to the human mind... and trapped birds. This novel is propelled forward by a clearer plot while still existing largely within the narrator's internal life. I enjoyed this book and am eager to discuss it with my bookshop's book club in a few weeks!

Gosh, this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, but it was a huge letdown for me. I am still really thankful to Fernanda Trias, Netgalley, and Scribner, and Simon Audio for granting me advanced access.

A massive, horrifying novel from a really massive talent. I was unable to put this down or forget about it.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the eARC of this eerie title!**

I have rounded up from 3 starts to 4 because I love the cover and concept of this book so much. I wish I loved the "story" more, but even at 240 pages this one took me forever to get through.

I don't want to scare anyone away from this book and I do think it is a perfect book club read. Unfortunately, it was a little too literary for me and not nearly dystopian and horrific enough. I was expecting to learn more about the world surrounding our main character, not just crusing along inside her head while she hunkered down in her apartment.

There were some really cool snippets in here but this one just felt too much like being inside my own head during the Covid lockdown. I encourage readers who find the synopsis intriguing that enjoy literary fiction to check this one out!

Things in this world are just... bad, basically, and rendering cities uninhabitable. Food is scarce, people are dying from what the synopsis refers to as an "algae bloom". We follow our narrator/main character as she's in the midst of the fallout of the aforementioned Bad Thing™. She is currently the nanny for a young boy who seemingly has Prader-Willi syndrome, and since there is literally no food to eat, she has to be extra careful. His parents are obviously rich, and can't be arsed to deal with both their child with a disability and the end days, so they pay our MC to do it for them. They give her a break by taking Mauro to the "country" for a few days every so often. It's... rough, but she is trying to buy her and her mother's way out of the city, so. We do what we must. (Unless we're rich, then we just pay to make our problems go away- literally, in this case.)

We get to see glimpses of her life as she visits her mother, as well as her ex-husband who is in the hospital because he has fallen ill with this plague that everyone is getting from Monty's algae. We also get to see bits of how the city around her is devolving, literally right before her eyes. It's a quiet sort of apocalyptic story, as she's still clinging on to the remnants of her life while she tries to find both the means and the gumption to escape.

The atmosphere is incredibly on point, as the whole book has a rather melancholy tone, which you'd expect from such a novel. You can truly feel as the world around our main character slips further into decrepit isolation, as staying becomes completely untenable. There still remain hopeful moments, which do help to keep the book feeling balanced. There are moments were the pacing does feel quite slow, but like I said, this is a much quieter book, so it tracks.

Bottom Line: A thoughtful, quieter apocalyptic story that focuses on the smaller nuances of the endings of things.

Thank you Scribner for my free ARC of Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías — available now!

Read this if you:
🌡️ enjoy cli-fi books, like [book:The Light Pirate|60468332]
💬 don't mind a slower pace (thoughts, not plots)
😷 enjoy reliving the early days of covid lockdown

Translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary 🇪🇸

It's dangerous outside, especially on the coast, and any remaining residents of coastal cities live in constant fear of toxic winds. Our unnamed narrator is getting by, taking care of her mother and also of a young boy with a strange disorder, but she wonders why she feels compelled to stay at all. Why stay in this horrible, abandoned city, subsisting on the slimy pink meat substance that's all anyone can afford there?

This was a plodding, introspective read with lots of thoughts and minimal plots. Which I normally enjoy a lot. But something prevented me from really connecting with this particular story, and I think it was the lack of character development of our unnamed narrator. Despite her constant stream of thoughts, we know little about her, and thus her plight didn't touch me as it maybe should have. Or maybe that wasn't the point, I don't know. I sometimes worry that translation (even if it's a perfect translation, on paper) takes out some vital pieces of the story's original soul. Alas! Try this one if you're looking for tense climate fiction, with apocalyptic overtones.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Set in an unnamed South American city that abuts the sea in the not too distant future, Fernanda Trías, who won the National Uruguayan Literature Prize in her native country, immerses the reader in a dystopian hellscape. The story unfolds slowly as the reader tries to comprehend an ecological disaster where an algae caused the sea to turn red. Initially, the algae didn’t seem dangerous, just a beautiful phenomenon but, after a few weeks, the shoreline was carpeted with dead fish and an epidemic ensued. The initial symptoms seemed like the flu, a cough, fatigue, malaise; however, within a few weeks, the infected’s skin would begin to peel off.

The wealthy move far from the sea as contamination is worse along the coastline and spend fortunes at auctions purchasing seascapes painted in colors they would never see again. Houses are boarded up and eaten away by neglect and gases in the air, or are taken over by squatters. The advance of the noxious red wind sets off alarms that interrupt daily life and bring the stench of garbage, silt and chemicals. Food is scarce and pink slime, a jellied meat that smelled like congealed blood, is served up in little cups and called an ideal high protein foodstuff. “Meat for all.”

In this world of sealed windows, air filters, and twice boiled water, is the unnamed narrator, who quit her job writing propaganda pieces for a magazine to care for Mauro, a child who suffered from a syndrome that caused an insatiable appetite that drowned out every other thought and necessitated that the narrator padlock the refrigerator, kitchen cabinets, and the drawers. “Rotten eggs, mold, plaster; he could eat until he chocked, until he shredded his esophagus like an old cloth.” “When it came to Mauro’s hunger, you could never be too careful.” The protagonist was paid not to complain, to keep Mauro on a short leash, and to distract him from his hunger. As the unnamed caretaker muses, Mauro’s parents “hadn’t only bought my time, they’d also bought my energy; they’d bought my muscles, my sore quadriceps and shaking arms after playing airplane.”

In addition to tending to Maura, the protagonist tends to her irascible mother who she hopes to spirit away to Brazil, and to her former husband, Max, one of the infected who made it out of the critical care wing and resides in the wing for the chronically ill at the Clinics. Max had gone into his garden to gather firewood although the alarm had sounded. The narrator isn’t sure if his behavior reflects “[a]rrogance, or self-sacrifice.”

Trias vividly writes about themes of environmental destruction and mortality and the quiet heroism of the unnamed narrator. Thank you Scribner and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this compelling but depressing read.

Pink Slime is a quiet, haunting novel about a coastal South American city infected by toxic algae blooms. All the fish are dead, all the birds are gone, and everyone rich enough to relocate has moved away – but not our narrator, who lives in a mostly abandoned apartment building. She occupies her time with the child she nannies, making occasional treks to see her mother, and visiting her ex-husband in the hospital, where he suffers from a chronic version of the algae-borne disease.

Pink Slime is a subtle and melancholy dystopia that largely consists of the narrator reflecting on her life up to the present day as she finds herself isolated, in a state of stasis and denial – unready to leave her home, unsure how she can stay. The writing is deeply philosophical and includes lots of commentary about ecological disaster, socioeconomic factors, and complex family dynamics. It’s a book in which not a lot is actually happening; but at the same time, everything is happening, if that makes sense. It’s a thought-provoking and bleak slice of one woman’s life that makes provocative statements about our own world, making it read like a quiet but urgent call to action.

Thank you to Scribner for the early reading opportunity.

A translated horror, dystopian story about a fungus killing everyone in it wake. An annoying main character that I sort of wished would have been strangled by the pink slime from page one.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Such a super strange but eccentric horror of a dystopian novel. It gave me vibes from Tender is The Flesh, so if you liked that book you will enjoy this.

An intriguing entry into the horror genre. The unnamed narrator is struggling in an environment that's been taken over by an algae bloom, the only thing to eat is Meatrite and she's only in contact with three people. Her mother is a challenge, her ex husband Max is ill, and she cares for Mauro, a young boy with an insatiable appetite. It's a quiet descent - there's not a big aha or shriek-and it won't be for everyone. it is however quite thought provoking. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

I was originally drawn to this because it was giving ‘Soylent Green’ vibes and in some ways I was right but I wasn’t expecting it to be such a beautiful and heartbreaking story. This novel is set in a realistic modern dystopian city where our main character is trying to navigate her inner feelings of loss and grief while she looks after a young boy with a disability. The atmosphere that this story paints is creepy and unsettling. I found myself getting super anxious and at some points I had to put it down because I started to feel claustrophobic. I saw some reviews saying that this book was boring and slow but I didn’t feel that way. I enjoyed the short chapters and the pacing was perfect for the tone in my opinion. Big thanks to NetGally and Scibner publishers for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

3.75 stars

Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for providing an ARC for this title.

Fernanda Trias' 'Pink Slime' is a haunting story set in a dystopian universe plagued by a pandemic. It explores human struggles and relationships during an uncertain and disorienting time. The premise was original and unique. A slow-burn story that explores an unnamed female narrative's inner thoughts of her experience with juggling her relationships: her mother, ex-husband and a child that she is babysitting. 'Pink Slime' isn't just about human experiences or the consequences, there's also a larger conversation to be had about the impending climate change that changes the world's trajectory.

Whether intentional or not, the story is a reminder of the early days of the 2020 pandemic and so eerie to read about it in a book (translated to English) 4 years later. It's a timely reflection of human resilience and how much people can endure during a difficult time.

Unfortunately, 'Pink Slime' was just a bit too slow-paced in some parts of the story. Trias could've explored the characters a bit more because it felt like they were not fleshed out properly.

Other than that, 'Pink Slime' is a gripping novel that explores an unusual period in time. It's tender and suffocating, which clearly illustrates the ominous nature of the distant future or the past, however, the reader wants to perceive the story.

This is a good book but it's not very memorable. The writing style is a little disjointed and uneven. I like weird stories, but I wanted a more impactful novel. All the characters felt interchangeable and a little flat. Good plot but I needed a little more tension and excitement.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this title.

This book is so beautifully haunting, astute, and lyrical as I have come to expect from this new crop of South American authors.

I expect that many will come into this book expecting it to be an action-packed dystopian novel, which is definitely not what you get. It is slow-burning and tense, more of an exploration of relationships - the narrator's difficult relationship with her mother, the breakdown of a marriage, the responsibility of caring for a sick child who is not her own - amidst an uncertain landscape.

Pink Slime falls into a new-ish sub genre of fiction - climate fiction - exploring the effects the warming planet has on humanity. Unfortunately this one just did not work for me. The characters were hard to connect with and the story meandered around a bit too much to hook me in. I did like the authors writing and will absolutely try something else from them in the future. Thanks to NetGalley for the chance to read and review this one.