‘Meat’ is the debut novel from author Joseph D’Lacey and the first novel to be released under Beautiful Book’s (UK) ‘Bloody Books’ imprint.
If I needed one word to describe the novel, it would be: Disturbing. But that wouldn’t do the novel enough justice. Because I like disturbing. In a novel with such content, disturbing is the only way it can be portrayed.
The novel takes place in the town of Abyrne, a small suburb-like environment that happens to be the only remaining structures after what we are told is a cataclysmic event. The world outside Abyrne, as far as the townsfolk can see, is completely black and void of life. Hence, the townsfolk are there to stay, forever. Ruling the town is the meat processing plant, MMP, and its offshoot divisions. The plant provides the major food sustenance for the town, as was decreed in the Religious texts – with twisted names such as The Book of Giving and The Gut Psalter. This meat comes in the form of ‘cattle’ (I will call it this to withhold the surprise), known as the Chosen. However, like real life, the MMP is a business, and although there is an overload of meat from the Chosen, townsfolk who cannot afford the high demand prices are starving to death while the rich get very, very fat. Yes, Abyrne is not the nicest place to live.
One of the novel’s central characters is Richard Shanti, dubbed the ‘Ice Pick’ for his smooth efficiency as a stunner at the meat processing plant. He puts the bolt gun into the ‘cattle’ before they are moved on to be sliced and diced. Shanti makes sure they don’t suffer a second more than necessary. He has to – if his efficiency drops then he could well be out of a job, and there is only one place ex-MMP employees end up. Shanti manages to hide his conscience though – he knows what he is doing is horrible, and psychically punishes himself by running to and from walk with weights, so that he collapses each night with exhaustion, his frame emaciated. He also refuses to eat the meat of the Chosen, because he knows where it comes from. And, gradually, he begins to understand the ‘cattle’, both through their body language/actions and the hissing and tapping sounds they use for communication.
Shanti is a wonderfully, emotionally complex character. The opposite is his wife, who he has no love for because she cannot understand his despair and will do anything (!) for slabs of meat to feed herself and their twin girls (who Shanti eventually seems to care very much for). Shanti finally finds reasoning with a man in the town’s outskirts, the Derelict Quarters. This man is Prophet John Collins, who wants people to know that you don’t have to eat meat (as decreed) to survive. Collins’ words are blasphemous to the authorities though. On one side are the Grand Bishop and the Welfare, who make sure religious sanctities are carried out, blindly following texts previous generations created to do what they think is right. On the other side are the MMP boss, Meat Baron Rory Magnus, and his cronies. If you cross seven-foot, monster-sized Magnus or any aspect of his meat plant, you end up in the food chain. Simple – it maintains control of the town. And it is the occasional related scene that provides much of the nerve-twitching horror in this novel – people don’t just die, they are taken to a cellar for horrendous torture. In fact, one of the plant workers even goes through MMP’s processing stages, and it is through his eyes that we see the true horror of what is happening in the town. Brilliant!
Of course, it is through Shanti and Collins that conflict arises. They band together a group of believers who seek a better alternative to the nature of Abyrne and their way of life quickly catches on to the two parties. Whilst the Welfare and MMP seek to find and stop Collins, they also struggle to retain power of the town. And while this is happening, a Welfare’s Parson, Parson Mary Simonson, spends her remaining days (she has the ‘shakes’, the common form of death in the town, in the form of beef poisoning) seeking out information on Shanti, who may not be who he claims to be, his register listing him as dead at birth. The novel is tied up in true horror style – an intense meeting of all parties, a battle royale with the obvious outcomes.
Meat is one of those brilliant styles of horror novel that slowly builds to points of terror. For example, the methodical description of the town’s abattoir and its processing stages in the first couple of chapters seems unnecessary, but it is leading the reader to make their own judgements before the twists are revealed. As soon as I read the descriptions of the ‘cattle’ I knew they couldn’t just be traditional cows, and I was hooked to read further and discover the horrific truth. By that time, I was drawn so deep in the novel I couldn’t stop reading.
The town of Abyrne is always sitting in the backdrop of the plot, its details touched on lightly but with enough emphasis that it is a messed up place, subjected to crumbling architecture with little to repair it, corrupted rulers and hierarchical figures competing for the crown, the need to keep low profiles should your town status be revoked (the only way out of the town is through the meat plant), and the inhabitants’ complete dependence on meat to keep them surviving. Slightly longer glimpses of the town are shown when Shanti and Parson Mary walk through the streets, and although I do wish more was explored (particularly the grain fields), there is enough revealed to maintain a truly dark atmosphere. In other words, in addition the injustices in the MMP, you hardly want this town to survive. Indeed, those who chose to voluntarily remove themselves from the society usually move to the outskirts, the Derelict Quarter, and I found this realm much more comforting.
People will say this book is a might exemplar piece for Vegetarianism, even though the author is not a vegetarian/vegan, but I do not agree. It is a further strike after mad cow disease, sure. And it will definitely make you think about your meat supplies – as D’Lacey comments: “If you don’t have the stomach to kill, gut, skin and dress an animal, you ought not have the stomach to eat it either.” I admit I have always been someone who just doesn’t want to know, but lately a moral conscience may be tugging at me. Other topics tackled (social commentary) include government power, religion and the blind faith in its texts, mass consumerism and conformity of the masses.
My opinion of the overall intent is this:
This is the story of what a town, somewhere down the line, felt it had to do to survive in the post-apocalyptic world. Man crafted religious texts to make such a decision feel right, and generations later the way of life was simply accepted. Then people blindly craved meat. Of course, such blatant obliviousness couldn’t go on forever – the town is old and dying, many of its people hardly worth saving, and someone had to stand up and finally do something about the injustices.
No matter the purpose, it is the characters that drive this novel, and the deep emotions each one is portrayed with – D’Lacey makes you hang on the horror until the novel arrives at a logical conclusion. At first I didn’t like the rapid change between characters (usually a few per chapter), but after a while you forget everything around you to become absorbed in the world of Abyrne and its crusaders and well-meaning (sometimes) villains. This is a wonderful debut novel, and I can only expect great things from this writer in the future as he refines his craft further.
Bloody Books and Joseph D’Lacey have devised a great campaign to promote the novel, which every aspiring author should check out. Besides a great website and a quote from Stephen King (“Joseph D’Lacey rocks!”), they have used a ‘meat-wagon’ to tour cities/towns and capture potential readers’ attention, selling a copy of the novel per mile travelled. You can view this on: http://www.dzine7studios.co.uk/jose/novals.asp
Hippocampus Press, 2005, ed. Robert Price
