"An intimate, melancholic look at an ecologically ravaged future."—Silvia Moreno-Garcia, New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic
"A knockout of a story."—Kirkus (starred review)
"Pink Slime is a dystopia all too near to us, in which human connections and sadness over the end matter more than any explanation of the fog and disease that shroud everything. Trías's writing, precise and poetic, turns this beautiful novel into a toxic dream, into a meditation on ruins, bodies, and solitude."—Mariana Enríquez, author of Our Share of Night
"Like a faintly distorting mirror, Pink Slime reflects back to us the image of a dying world. In this country, abandoned by God and government, the only consolation is the compassion and silent heroism of a few human beings. With her meticulous prose and the painful lucidity characteristic of her work, Fernanda Trías immerses us in a dystopia that expands around us like a poisonous perfume."—Guadalupe Nettel, author of Still Born, short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize
"Like a nightmare, like an omen, like the lines of an exquisite poem, Pink Slime echoes in my memory long after I read it. A book has never been so relevant, necessary, painful, and simply splendid.”—Jazmina Barrera, author of Cross-Stitch
"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."—Pubilsher's Weekly (starred review)
"An eerily calm tale...told in a conversational yet purposely discomfiting future subjunctive tense... With her eerie and unnervingly probable plot, strong narrative voice, and focus on the small, beautiful moments of life amid disaster, Trias’s tale will continue to haunt readers long after they turn the final page."—Library Journal (starred review)
“A beautiful elegiac meditation on parenting – in this case, the deep connection between a mother and son."—Locus Magazine
International praise for Pink Slime
“This is not a dystopia, but a full-on, technicolor apocalypse... That we are in the company of someone who truly cares makes the horror all the more visceral.”—The Scotsman
"Powerful and beautifully written, this is a disturbing read, depicting a terrifyingly convincing near-future scenario. The reader shares the achingly sad narrator’s feelings as care-giver, daughter and ex-lover." —The Guardian
"Trías expertly encapsulates the relationship between mother and child, obligation and affection, and the conflation of fear with love."—Kill Your Darlings Magazine
"Latin American fantastika is in the midst of a remarkable renaissance. The latest of this string of exhilarating new books to find its way into English is Uruguayan novelist Fernanda Trias's Pink Slime."—The Saturday Paper
"It's a dystopic work worthy of JG Ballard, where even in hopelessness there remains a flickering shard of hope or resignation."—The Irish Times
"Precise, luminous, and powerful."—L'indipendente
“Fernanda Trías revisits the apocalyptic novel with subtlety and intelligence; not as a heroic epic of survival, but through intense emotions and a choice that must be made.”—LH magazine
"[In this] novel—which belongs to that category of books that don't leave you once you’ve finished reading but rather force you to think of them, to keep returning to them—the stubbornness upon which we all depend in order to save ourselves, those we love, and our environment begins to emerge."—La Stampa
"After Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream and Mariana Enríquez's Our Share of Night, Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías completes a triptych of extraordinary works that have come to us in the last decade from the Rio de la Plata area. Three very different novels that nonetheless share the force with which they look straight into the abyss, maintaining the lucidity necessary to focus on each revealing detail."—L’Indice
“Intoxicating.”—Lire
“Pink Slime, like all truly great novels, etches itself indelibly onto the sensitive plate of one’s mind.”—Transfuge
★ 06/01/2024
"I cannot stop a future that has already arrived," says the unnamed narrator of Trías's eerily calm tale about an environmental apocalypse. Told in a conversational yet purposely discomfiting future subjunctive tense, the novel recounts the slow breakdown of society after deadly algae washed ashore, killed all the fish, and made other living creatures sick when the wind blew off the sea. Now the only safe food for humans is the ultra-processed "pink slime" of the title. The narrator visits her mother and her hospital-bound ex-husband, who is one of the few humans able to tolerate infection. She also cares for a young boy with a horrific medical syndrome, whose rich parents need a break from his insatiable hunger. A compelling tale with an unhurried pace that is striking for how it juxtaposes lyricism with banality. VERDICT With her eerie and unnervingly probable plot, strong narrative voice, and focus on the small, beautiful moments of life amid disaster, Trías's (The Rooftop) tale will continue to haunt readers long after they turn the final page. Pair it with other thoughtful and subtle horror stories such as Sealed by Naomi Booth or Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.