As I’m trying to write up my review for Uruguayan author Fernanda Trías’ novel Pink Slime (2023), I am drawing a blank and the only words I can think of dissatisfy me: depressing, dystopian, harrowing, tragic, and heartbreaking. They are too common, too cliche to describe a book that is neither.

Pink Slime is narrated by an unnamed, middle-aged woman living in a city destroyed by an ecological crisis. A terrifying red wind and red algae has polluted the city; hospitals overflow with those infected by the pollution, streets are empty, buildings abandoned and a walk could spell the end of your life. Our narrator works as a caretaker for a young boy named Mauro–a child whose unknown syndrome terrorises him with an all-consuming hunger, rendering him obese and difficult to manage. She spends her life outside Mauro visiting Max, her ex-husband, and her mother. These three relationships are suffocating the narrator, but she cannot bring herself to sever any of them or leave the city. She feels an inexplicable attachment to all and to the past:

“I spend my days riding the carousel of memory, sunk comfortably into the worn sofa of the past.”

The novel was a difficult read for me because of how painful its nostalgia is. It is full of vivid recollections of the narrator’s past, revolving mainly around her childhood days at the beach, her early courtship with Max, and Delfa, her beloved caretaker as a child, who died shortly before the crisis. 

I find the narrator’s reminiscences about Delfa particularly moving:

“I remember Delfa letting me form little sausages…cutting out dresses for my paper dolls with me, letting me brush her wig while she sat on the couch with her mending.”

Poignantly, the narrator admits that she “can’t remember the last time [she] saw [Delfa]”, and that she “tried for years [to remember], with that naive zeal of a person who believes that life is linear, that memory is a straight, neat line drawn between two points.” More than lost childhood is lost innocence, which haunts our narrator’s life. It is this overwhelming sense of personal loss which makes the novel a tragic read, even more so than its depiction of a barren wasteland. It is disturbing, with its analysis of how memory is easily distorted and faded.

Each chapter begins with a small snippet. For example:

“Do you remember that day?

Which day?

That day. I watched you through the window as you left.”

Whatever you call them, these snippets feel juvenile, reading like something you would find on a Tumblr board. I found them mediocre, and their intended, poetic quality did not come across. They did not add nor detract from the narrative. They were simply unnecessary.

They seem insincere in contrast to the rest of the novel because a story as beautifully written and evocative as Trías’ needs no further embellishment. The snippets feel like an added ornament; low-quality and slightly gaudy.

I recommend Pink Slime because it grants you a better appreciation of life, the past and the present. Its nostalgia is sharp, and at times overpowering, but our narrator allows you to understand the fragile nature of memory and the present moment.