{"id":446042,"date":"2024-09-24T13:00:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T17:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=446042"},"modified":"2024-09-24T13:43:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T17:43:44","slug":"pink-slime-by-fernanda-trias-heather-cleary-nba-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2024\/09\/24\/pink-slime-by-fernanda-trias-heather-cleary-nba-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"“Pink Slime” by Fernanda Tr\u00edas & Heather Cleary [NBA 2024]"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the National Book Award for Translated Literature<\/a> longlist was announced the other week, I realized that I hadn’t read\u00a0any\u00a0<\/em>of the books on the list for the first time in . . . ages. So I started this series to educate myself before the winner is announced. You can find all the posts in this series here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Title:\u00a0Pink Slime<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Author:<\/strong> Fernanda Tr\u00edas<\/p>\n

Translator:<\/strong> Heather Cleary<\/p>\n

Publisher: <\/strong>Simon & Schuster<\/a><\/p>\n

Publication Year (Original Text): <\/strong>2020<\/p>\n

Page Count: <\/strong>220<\/p>\n

Goodreads Rating:<\/strong> 3.66 with 3,532 ratings and 740 reviews<\/p>\n

Notable Amazon Sales Ranking: <\/strong>#858 in\u00a0Horror Short Stories (??\u2014not short stories, or horror? OK . . .)<\/p>\n

Publisher Description: <\/strong>In a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to understand why her world is falling apart. An algae bloom has poisoned the previously pristine air that blows in from the sea. Inland, a secretive corporation churns out the only food anyone can afford\u2014a revolting pink paste, made of an unknown substance. In the short, desperate breaks between deadly windstorms, our narrator stubbornly tends to her few remaining relationships: with her difficult but vulnerable mother; with the ex-husband for whom she still harbors feelings; with the boy she nannies, whose parents sent him away even as terrible threats loomed. Yet as conditions outside deteriorate further, her commitment to remaining in place only grows\u2014even if staying means being left behind.<\/p>\n

An evocative elegy for a safe, clean world,\u00a0Pink Slime<\/i>\u00a0is buoyed by humor and its narrator\u2019s resiliency. This unforgettable novel explores the place where love, responsibility, and self-preservation converge, and the beauty and fragility of our most intimate relationships.<\/p>\n

Previous Familiarity:\u00a0<\/strong>I was convinced\u2014until five minutes ago\u2014that I had met Tr\u00edas at the Chautauqua Institution last summer as part of an event on climate change with Andri Sn\u00e6r Magnason. I did not. I met Cristina Bendek<\/a>, whose book,\u00a0Salt Crystals<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>was translated from the Spanish and published by Charco. I mean, that’s sort of close-ish?<\/p>\n

Translator: <\/strong>Heather Cleary! I met Heather when she was just getting started at an event we did for Macedonio Fern\u00e1ndez’s\u00a0The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>She’s done three Sergio Chejfec (R.I.P.) titles for us:\u00a0The Dark<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0The Planets<\/em><\/a>, and\u00a0The Incompletes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>(My god these three books are so good. Chejfec was special and deserves a rediscovery of sorts.) She’s incredibly gifted and always chooses interesting projects.<\/p>\n

My Reading: <\/strong>Very anxious book that reads like a warning about future climate catastrophes and how these events will wreak havoc on social structures. I joked above about how this book isn’t\u00a0really\u00a0<\/em>horror (at least not to me), but the “red fog” that rolls in and sets this whole climate disaster in motion flays the skin off people who encounter it, which is both gross and, yes, horrifying. Most interesting to me though is the “pink slime” of the title\u2014a strange, affordable foodstuff that everyone survives on\u2014is so so similar to the food served in the Institute in\u00a0Lanark. (<\/em>In Lanark<\/em>, the gross foodstuff is made from humans. Horrifying!)<\/p>\n

Reflections on Style:\u00a0<\/strong>Pretty direct and evocative. “When the fog rolled in, the port turned into a swamp. Shadows fell across the plaza, filtering between the trees and leaving the long marks of their fingers on all they touched. Under each unbroken surface, mold cleaved silent through wood, rust bored into metal. Everything was rotting.” There are little zen-like, unattributed conversations (presumably between our narrator and her ex, Max) that add a bit of levity:<\/p>\n

Once upon a time.<\/p>\n

There was what?<\/p>\n

Once upon a time there was a time.<\/p>\n

That never was?<\/p>\n

That never again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The book is pretty bleak\u2014a situation only reinforced by the audiobook narrator, Frankie Corzo\u2014whose voice and cadence is\u00a0so\u00a0<\/em>serious. Pink Slime<\/em> is really interesting, but after this and\u00a0Woodworm<\/em>, I’m dying for a book that I’d find more enjoyable and maybe a little silly\u2014translations don’t have to be so medicinal!<\/p>\n

Any Big Reviews?: <\/strong>In the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, where Lydia Millet (one of my favorite authors) says:<\/p>\n

On either side of the caregiving woman stands a damaged and damaging male, one with power and one without. Yet inertia, too, is at the root of her paralysis \u2014 she cannot leave, she confesses, because she\u2019s unable to imagine a life untethered to her anchors. Only the absence of these tragic boy-men may allow her to have some agency at last.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Will It Be Discussed in Five Years: <\/strong>I’m really curious as to how these sorts of books will fare if we have more and more environmental disasters. Will these be of interest as things fall apart, or are they best enjoyed as warnings of what\u00a0could\u00a0<\/em>come to pass?<\/p>\n

What Authors\/Books Does the Publisher Compare This To: <\/strong>None, actually. But three of the blurbs are from authors you could group together with Tr\u00edas: Mariana Enr\u00edquez, Guadalupe Nettel, and Jazmina Barrera.<\/p>\n

Any Books You Would Recommend for Fans of\u00a0Pink Slime<\/em>: <\/strong>Tender Is the Flesh <\/i><\/a>by Agustina Bazterrica &\u00a0Sarah Moses, and\u00a0Lanark<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Alasdair Gray.<\/p>\n

Will it Win:<\/strong> My sense of things\u2014from Winter in Sokcho\u00a0<\/em>through\u00a0The Words that Remain\u2014<\/em>is that short, localized, slightly strange fiction does really well for the National Book Award. And this book has those qualities! Still haven’t read enough of these to make an informed prediction, but I’ll put this at 15% for the time being.<\/p>\n

Your Rating<\/strong>: 3.5 out of 5 stars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist was announced the other week, I realized that I hadn’t read\u00a0any\u00a0of the books on the list for the first time in . . . ages. So I started this series to educate myself before the winner is announced. You can find all the posts in this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":446052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[72752,46496,72702,72712,72742,67816,36706],"class_list":["post-446042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-fernanda-trias","tag-heather-cleary","tag-national-book-award","tag-national-book-award-for-translated-literature","tag-nba-2024","tag-simon-schuster","tag-uruguayan-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446042"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":446142,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446042\/revisions\/446142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}