A well-imagined, often poetically beautiful plague story ... Trías’s protagonist is the shadow in all of us — the passive subject, suspended in the limbo of indecision, who cannot act to save herself.
Pink Slime is an unsettling book, and not least because, while reading it, I had to idea where it was going to go ... Cleverly, the links between conditions, illness and the churn of the world are never made explicit. That we are in the company of someone who truly cares makes the horror all the more visceral ... Pink Slime kept me guessing; but the guesswork is far less important than the emotional heft of it.
This is a vividly claustrophobic world, stuffed with strong smells, tastes and pressing hunger ... In Heather Cleary’s thoughtful, poetic translation, it is through exploring the connections between people, places and things that Pink Slime is at its best.
An unnerving read ... It may be an acquired taste, but in the slurry of dystopian fiction churned out by the publishing industry, Pink Slime certainly stands out.
With her eerie and unnervingly probable plot, strong narrative voice, and focus on the small, beautiful moments of life amid disaster, Trías’s... tale will continue to haunt readers long after they turn the final page.
This is a stunningly dark novel, but a beautiful one; Trías’ prose and Cleary’s translation perfectly capture what it feels like to live in an epidemic ... Stunning writing makes this a startlingly powerful novel.
Vivid ... The novel captivates with its increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere, and Trías keenly explores the resentments that fester within a mother-daughter relationship, a failing marriage, and childcare work. Readers will be gripped.
