I will first review the narrative, the characters and plot, and then move into the themes.

In terms of narrative, Tender is the Flesh is told in a limited third-person present tense—an unusual choice that generates a dissonance between the apparent proximity to Marcos Tejo’s mind (the narrating character) and the increasing blurring of events in his life.

The author also alternates between presenting dialogue conventionally (using quotation marks) and narrating it in large, dense paragraphs. This choice appears deliberate, as narrated dialogue only surfaces when Marcos ‘spaces out’, disregarding whoever is speaking in favour of his own inner monologue. This works very effectively, particularly because these moments often coincide with gruesome scenes (for instance, Marcos’s tour of a breeding centre of ‘heads’: humans bred for consumption). In these cases, his lack of attention creates a sense of detachment that, by any reasonable moral measure, should not exist—yet it does, because the normalisation of horror is, perhaps, the novel’s central concern.

Which leads us into the plotlines weaving throughout the book:

1. Marcos’s work as the second-hand man to the owner of the Krieg Processing Plant presents the horror of legalised cannibalism, alongside its implications for those dehumanised individuals now designated as ‘products for consumption’. It establishes the setting, but operates as the background of Marcos’s life—the day-job he performs while other, more personally transformative events unfold. This ‘relevance’ says plenty about his character.

2. The death of his child and the departure of his wife, Cecilia, bear down on Marcos. It acts as a catalyst for several narrative developments, including those connected to Jasmine’s storyline.

3. Jasmine’s is arguably the most harrowing, yet also the most relegated. As a high-quality ‘head’ (a human bred for consumption), she is gifted to Marcos... yet despite her market value, he locks her in a barn and tends to her minimally. His disregard culminates in an act of sexual violence, resulting in her pregnancy. I will return to this storyline when discussing the novel’s themes.

4. The central storyline is, in my opinion, the most important: the situation with Don Armando, Marcos’ senile father, now living in an aged care. It shapes much of Marcos’ behaviour, from his line of employment to his visits to an abandoned zoo solely because his father once took him there. Likewise, Armando’s death marks a decisive turning point: the moment when Marcos begins to impose boundaries, sever relationships that burden him, and initiate change.

Thematically, though, this novel is a goldmine.

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It presents extreme horrors through Marcos’ detached, almost bored narrative voice, yet it tempers this detachment with selective ethical concerns—enough ‘morality’ to make him initially relatable, and enough ambiguity to allow it to surface throughout the story. This gradual unveiling of Marcos’ true character can be read as a covert moral test for the reader. What I found particularly effective, is how the author sowed ‘clues’ about Marcos’ ethics from the very beginning, yet hid them in his curated, carefully crafted inner monologue:

No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity. They call them product, or meat, or food. Except for him; he would prefer not to have to call them by any name.

As the story progresses, his language ‘slips’ and becomes blunter—mirroring Marcos’ gradual acceptance of his own feelings towards the ‘heads’. This is especially evident when he bathes Jasmine before naming her:

He cleans her chest, armpits, stomach. Diligently, as though he were cleaning a valuable but inanimate object. He’s nervous, as if the object could break, or come to life.

Her story is uncomfortable and dehumanising. As a ‘head’, her vocal cords have been removed (a practice intended to prevent screaming during slaughter and, likely—though never explicitly stated—to limit communication). She has been branded in the forehead like cattle, and kept in a cage sleeping on hay. When Marcos receives her, she is even wearing a leash and does not attempt to remove it.

Yet the novel uses language effectively to convey Marcos’ discomfort around her: he keeps her out of sight in the barn, tends to her minimally, and considers selling her. It is not until he observes her body that he perceives her differently, going so far as to strip naked in front of her:

He strokes her neck. Now he’s the one who trembles. He removes his jeans and stands there, naked. His breath quickens. He continues to hug her as it rains down. What he wants to do is prohibited. But he does it anyway.

For a book that does not shy away from explicit depictions of extreme horror (which I will not detail here), the scene in which Marcos sexually assaults Jasmine concludes with the passage above. This is particularly striking given that before the novel included two explicit, on-the-page sexual encounters between Marcos and a former lover.

This omission can be read as a reflection of the value Marcos assigns to Jasmine: she is ‘beautiful’, a ‘valuable object’—yet insignificant enough that her rape is excluded not only from the narrative, but from Marcos’ conscience. The text expects the reader to infer what occurs (as well as the subsequent months Marcos spends ‘enjoying’ her), precisely because she is framed as a ‘head’, and nothing more.

The second half of the novel—beginning when Jasmine is eight months pregnant—is harrowing, yet notably restrained in how it exposes her continued dehumanisation. Marcos may sleep with her, fondle her, yet he keeps her locked in a room and monitors her through cameras akin to those commonly used to monitor pets. He still ‘feeds’ Jasmine (rather than ‘serving her food’), and worries about her primarily insofar as she is carrying his child.

His treatment of her as the bearer of his child, rather than as a woman pregnant with his child, opens the door to a broader discussion of objectification, and of the way societies often value a foetus more than the person carrying it.

This brings us back, once again, to language and its role in constructing moral contradiction. At one point, Marcos narrates:

She spends hours watching television, sleeping, drawing, staring at a fixed point. At times, it seems she’s thinking, like she really can.

And yet, only a few pages earlier, he acknowledged that ‘heads’ were, in fact, human:

Before going into the plant, he sits in the car for a few seconds and looks at the complex of buildings. They’re white, compact, and efficient. There’s nothing to indicate that inside them humans are killed.

So is Marcos’s numb detachment a defence mechanism, or an ethical failure? Is he dehumanising because the system is, or because he himself has grown numb?

The novel doesn’t answer these questions. Instead, it presents situations for the reader to craft their own answer—while simultaneously ‘training’ that same reader to accept its language until, by the end, they have learnt to expect the most gruesome crimes against humanity.

It is then when the horror surfaces: when the reader finishes the book and realises that, halfway through, Marcos no longer needed to be subtle with his choice of words.

PS: A podcast episode will be landing soon.

This review was originally shared on Goodreads, on March 2nd, 2026.

In short, a masterpiece as only PKD could craft.

In terms of setting, this is what I affectionally call "period scifi"—sci-fi books that are actually set in the past, most likely because it was "near future" when it was written. In here, it is the year 1992, and individuals with psionic powers (e.g., precognition, telepathy) are a threat to the social, economic and political balance. To contain their manifestations, there are "prudential" companies that provide individuals called "inertials" that can neutralise the activity of telepaths and precogs. Prudence organisations also offer their clients security and privacy from the intrusions of psychic spies. Runciter Associates is owned by Glen Runciter and provides "inertial" services, but has lost track of a dangerous telepathic.

That is only part of the setting. A key element is the distinction between full-life (i.e., what we currently consider as "being alive") and half-life. Half-life occurs when someone is recently dead and placed into a cryogenic facility called "cold-pac", known as Moratoriums. While in this cryogeny, the half-lifers cannot move, and their bodies age neither, but they can be "telephoned" by their full-life relatives.

This description is just scratching the surface of what half-life is, since very early in the book it is implied that half-lifers have their own sort of "world", that they mingle with the others that are close, and that perhaps their half-life minds create a different reality.

So that begs the question: what if the world we know is just a half-life world (the product of our minds) and not "true" reality?

Here is where Plato's allegory gets twisted: how would people/characters react to being told they're dead and half-living? Would that be more painful? Can they do anything about it? But then... how many layers to reality are? What if you "awaken" from one reality into another, then "awaken" into another? Maybe there’s no safe layer of reality at all.

I won't answer these questions because the book doesn't; PKD was just exploring them… though I do find those questions core to Ubik's theme.

Now, what is Ubik? It's a product; a spray can, a salve, a balm, powder to be diluted. The most popular definition out there is that Ubik is:

…a stabilizer that can reverse the course of time and protect people and things from decay.

Though while somewhat true, that definition falls short of what Ubik truly is... yet any attempt at defining or explaining it are deeply spoilery. I think a nice attempt at defining Ubik is saying that Ubik is the product of someone's mind, will manifest, the persistence to live, a belief that gives someone resistance to reality. I don't think there is a single answer, but to me, the spray can was certainly not "god", as I've seen reported in some reviews.

TL;DR: It's a great book, but in PKD's style, it cannot be taken lightly as "just" a plot. Thematically, it is incredibly rich.

This review was originally shared on Goodreads, on July 18th, 2025.

If you are interested in hearing more about Ubik, I did a lengthy podcast episode (with transcript included) discussing the book through Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and Kant’s noumenal/phenomenal as applied to Ubik (the spray can, the salve, the… everything Ubik is inside the book). It’s one of my favourite episodes:

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The story is intentionally narrow: a post-apocalyptic setting, and a nameless father and son travelling south across the United States. There is no clearly defined goal beyond escaping the cold—which seems to follow them—and one message:

You have to carry the fire.

This message is easy to overlook, particularly at the beginning, as McCarthy does not return to it often, and certainly does not explain it—at least not on the page.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Allow me to examine the novel from its setting to its characters, and finally its themes.

The setting is minimalist: an ashen, desolate world, post-apocalyptic (perhaps in the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe), yet scarcely explained. The decay is pervasive, all-encompassing, and overwhelming, eroding everything—especially the remnants of humanity.

What the father and son encounter makes the bleakness unmistakable. This is an “every man for himself” world, where survivors will readily kill one another simply to strip away whatever rags and goods they possess. There are “bloodcults” roaming the roads, pillaging and enslaving others (it is implied that they assault women, keep adolescent boys as sex slaves, and even consume newborns). Some survivors have also resorted to cannibalism, a horror underscored through several encounters along the road.

This is never made explicit, yet the extreme nihilism—which renders even survival seemingly meaningless—is essential to the exploration of the novel’s central question: can moral goodness exist when every external structure that sustains it has collapsed?

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The setting itself appears to suggest that, without such frameworks—no society, no laws, no governing bodies to enforce them—humanity will descend into utmost depravity and moral disintegration.

Here I must pause to analyse the father and son.

Interestingly, McCarthy chose to keep them nameless. At no point are their names revealed, and even when the narration remains closely aligned with the father’s perspective, he refers to his son simply as “the boy”. One might argue that this resists the expectations of readers more used to conventional, commercially-oriented narrative structures; however, the absence of names is consistent with the novel’s thematic axis: if the world is nihilistic, if meaning itself is eroded, what purpose does a name serve?

Ultimately, a name is typically bound to identity, but the road—and the post-apocalyptic landscape it traverses—relentlessly strips both meaning and identity away: first at the societal level, and then from the individuals who endure it.

For this reason, the father and son are not quite characters in the traditional sense, but rather characterised themes—almost akin to literalised metaphors, where abstraction is given narrative form.

Allow me to elaborate.

The father is a remnant of the “old world”: a man who remembers what it was, and who clings to the identity that way of living once allowed him to have. He was raised to be the provider, the protector, the moral centre of the family he was building—but the journey along the road steadily erodes that role.

It begins with a question:

How does the never to be differ from what never was?

From the moment this question surfaces, something in him begins to change. He is forced to confront whether he could kill the boy—if circumstances demanded it—while questioning why they continue to survive at all. And yet, he persists in a fragile, almost reflexive faith in an unnamed god, insisting that they are “the good guys”, that they are still “carrying the fire”.

Yet, as the father’s doubts deepen, an unspecified sickness begins to take hold of him—subtle at first, but progressively more debilitating.

The boy’s age is unspecified, though he cannot be older than four to six years. At first, the father attempts to shield him from the surrounding amorality—covering his eyes when they pass burnt corpses, or withholding explanations when the truth would reveal something too disturbing. He tells the boy:

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever.

Later, when they cross a stretch strewn with charred bodies, the father again tries to protect him—but the boy responds:

What you put in your head is there forever?

Yes.

It’s okay Papa. [...] They’re already there.

Yet somehow, this doesn’t... reach the boy. He remains unchanged—innocent, vulnerable, and in need of protection.

More importantly, the extent of the world’s bleakness seems not to matter (whether it be a man holding a knife to his throat, the discovery of humans imprisoned as livestock, or being shot at by those seeking their supplies): the boy retains his innocence. Whenever they encounter others—someone struck by lightning, a lost child, even a half-blind old man—he insists on sharing their food, or offering help in whatever way he can.

Such behaviour may appear irrational if the boy is read purely as a character. However, if he is understood instead as a characterised theme, his behaviour fits what he embodies: an irreducible moral instinct, a form of pre-cultural goodness that cannot be entirely eroded by the surrounding desolation, and which must, therefore, be protected.

You have to carry the fire.

I don’t know how to.

Yes, you do.

Is the fire real? The fire?

Yes it is.

Where is it? I don’t know where it is.

Yes you do. It’s inside you. It always was there. I can see it.

Understanding the boy in this way allows us to reinterpret the father’s faith—not as belief in an unspecified god, but as faith in the idea of goodness embodied in the child. The father’s sickness, then, is not merely a loss of the will to live, but a weakening of his ability to remain “one of the good guys” in a world where such a choice can be fatal.

This brings us back to the nihilistic setting, and to the question McCarthy may have been probing: can moral goodness exist when every external structure that sustains it has collapsed?

What the novel hints at is philosophically compelling: morality is a choice, and one that must be continually reasserted through each decision (through every encounter along the road) even when any external justification for it has already fallen away—whether social, religious, rational, or evolutionary. The boy (and the moral instinct he represents) must be protected, and cannot persist entirely on its own (as the ending may suggest), because morality is only meaningful if it can endure despite having no reason to exist.

This, perhaps, is what it means to “carry the fire”. To choose to live nobly despite hardship, and morality not as a principle that can be proven or defended, but as something enacted, again and again.

All in all, The Road resists easy categorisation and offers none of the legibility of modern fiction. For those willing to engage with it on its own terms, this is a work of remarkable philosophical depth.