The south Wales Valleys, 23rd June, 2016. It’s another long day chopping beef carcasses up at the slaughterhouse for former reality TV star and Iron Man contender, Caleb Jenkins, whose untroubled world unravelled when his old man’s carpet business went bust last year, another casualty of the global financial crisis. While he’s busy trying to manage the well-being of his conspiracy-theorist brother, the mortgage keeping a roof over his bankrupt parents’ heads, his own excruciating grief, internal rage and impossible credit score, politicians of all persuasions are promising the scared and voiceless people around him real change.
Desperate for acknowledgement and a transformation he can’t quite bring about by his own means, Caleb is on the edge.
Easy Meat is a glimpse of a young man and a country on the verge of a momentous decision.
My Review....
At only 121 pages long this is a punchy longish short story/novella.
Easy Meat tells the story of a day in the life of Valley Boy Caleb Jenkins. The day in question just happens to be the day of the Brexit referendum. Caleb is a man on the verge of a breakdown. He is struggling with his awful, low paid job in a slaughterhouse, where the rest of the workers are Polish immigrants. He is wilting under the pressure of sharing his home with his now bankrupt and homeless parents and weed addicted layabout brother. On top of this he has real girlfriend and child issues to contend with. He just needs a little something to help him turn the corner, just an opportunity to get back to normal.
For me there are a few little niggles with this novella. While the Merthyr setting is integral to the story I found the overuse of street and neighbourhood names to be a little distracting as was the ongoing description of butchering beef carcasses. While I understand that this was used as a counterpoint while Caleb's story was told in flash-back I thought the carcass dissection scenes were overdone. After reading this you may well sway away from eating meat. I don't know but would hazard a guess that the author is a vegetarian. and lastly I did not quite "get" the ending. Again these are subjective and probably say more about me than the writing.
Being a Valley Boy myself (I may have mentioned that before 🙄🙈) the area where I thought the author was absolutely bang on was in describing the socio-political malaise that now overwhelms the once proud working class, once labour voting valleys. The Valleys were the area that benefit most from European investment but still voted in favour of Brexit. She is very clever in that she does not do this by using macro-political policy statements, indeed politics is hardly mentioned overtly at all, but by describing the micro day-to-day encounters that Caleb and his family have. You see the frustration that had caused a gap in the market that UKIP and Brexit exploited. It seems that while most people voted Brexit not for ideological reasons but because the status quo just was not working. You are left feeling that there is a lack of opportunity and an inevitability that this festering social inertia will continue.
The author brings a caustic description to these encounters that is savagely sarcastic and well observed, (and with a hint of Raymond Chandler read in Humphrey Bogart's voice) see selected quotes. Any senior figure in the labour party (or indeed Plaid Cymru) would do well to read this book. It is a Welsh Boys from the Blackstuff for the Love Island generation.
Finally, I know we shouldn't judge a book by its cover but this cover is a belter.
Selected Quotes...
"It couldn't get any worse, the man said, rubbing his beer belly. There's families up on the hill surviving on charity from the church, like something from Victorian times
Sad, Caleb said.
Chuck a hand grenade in I reckon, the man said, see what happens."
"He'd been a cast member on the 2012 series, with seven other twenty somethings from every Abercwmnowhere in post industrial south Wales, bodybuilders with the IQ of crayons, ballooned on steriods and Pinot Grigio-soaked Beyonce wannabes. It was TV designed for rubberneckers who thought the salad always greener in someone else kebab."
"He noticed the peroxide blonde in the queue next to him was looking at him too, bottle green eyes homed in on him like a missile on a target. Scorching hot but obviously high maintenance, if not borderline insane."
"You know what it's like. We're working class bro.We're easy meat."
About the author...
Rachel Trezise’s debut novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl won a place on the Orange Futures List in 2002 and is now part of the Library of Wales series. In 2006 her short story collection Fresh Apples won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second collection Cosmic Latte won the Edge Hill Prize Readers’ Award in 2013 while her travel memoir Dial M for Merthyr won the Max Boyce Award. Her first play Tonypandemonium was produced by the National Theatre of Wales and won the Theatre Critics for Wales Award for best production. We’re Still Here was also produced by the National Theatre of Wales in 2017 while Cotton Fingers toured Wales, Ireland and Scotland, receiving a Summerhall Lustrum Award at the Edinburgh Festival. She lives in the Rhondda.
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