Pink Slime: A Gripping Novel Explores Tender and Suffocating Themes

Fernanda Trias’ Pink Slime (translated by Heather Cleary) is a novel that connects human struggles with the impending climate change. It is a haunting story in a dystopian future where a pandemic plagues the universe. The unnamed female narrator juggles her relationship with her mother, her ex-husband who is sick at the hospital, and babysitting someone’s child. It’s a riveting novel that intersects motherhood and the environmental crisis that illustrates the ominous nature of the world. 

The unnamed female narrator lives in a South American city. She quit her job as a journalist and is now a full-time babysitter to Mauro, a child of a wealthy couple whose family will take him back to their estate.  She visits her mother and her former partner, who is hospitalised. None of these relationships are healthy. Her mother is estranged and uncaring and her ex-husband is controlling, and bedridden with an illness. Her mother doesn’t understand why she cares for Mauro, who also has a strange eating habit and doesn’t verbalise his needs. While the world is in chaos, everyone is trying to survive the mysterious pandemic, debating whether or not to leave everything behind or stay in the city to repair the strained relationships. 

Pink Slime has a lot of ideas on motherhood, family, and the dangers of a prolonged environmental crisis. In this novel, Trias explains how things have turned unnatural. Just like the birds disappearing and the fishes dying, fires are breaking out everywhere. If anyone gets sick, their skin starts to peel off and they are doomed to be in the hospital and die. The water is covered in a toxic form of algae that threatens the ecosystem. The homes are abandoned and the rich have escaped inland to shelter from the dangerous winds. The narrator explains these unnatural phenomena with an urgency that constantly feels claustrophobic for the reader. Everything is in chaos. The apocalypse is not described as anyone would have thought; it’s all in technicolour. 

One thing to note about Pink Slime’s unnamed narrator is that, while her story is explained clearly, the other characters like the mother and ex-husband aren’t fleshed out properly. Her entire life revolves around them. Understandably, the novel is about relationships and how it affects the narrator. But for a story that emphasises the relationship between the narrator and the characters, the reader doesn’t know much about them. There’s always a sense of mystery behind their intentions. Perhaps, that is how Trias intended to write them. A bit strange yet mysterious. 

Pink Slime is a gripping novel that explores an unusual dystopian future. It’s suffocating yet explores tender themes of motherhood and broken relationships, while interweaving the ominous catastrophe plaguing the South American city. This book might not be for everyone, but Trias writes the story with a mesmerising poise and leaves the reader questioning the reality of the world we live in.