Published in 2020 (first published in 2019)
224 pages
Dolores Reyes was born in 1978 in Buenos Aires, where she studied classical literature. She is a teacher, known for her feminist activism, and a mother of seven children. Eartheater is her first novel, which immediately became an editorial and political case in Argentina, then also rebounded in Spain. It is dedicated to the memory of Melina Romero and Araceli Ramos, adolescent victims of femicide, whose remains rest in a cemetery near the school of Pablo Podestá, the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires where the author works.
What is this book about?
Electrifying and provocative, visceral and profound, a powerful literary debut novel about a young woman whose compulsion to eat earth gives her visions of murdered and missing people—an imaginative synthesis of mystery and magical realism that explores the dark tragedies of ordinary lives.
Set in an unnamed slum in contemporary Argentina, Earth-eater is the story of a young woman who finds herself drawn to eating the earth—a compulsion that gives her visions of broken and lost lives. With her first taste of dirt, she learns the horrifying truth of her mother’s death. Disturbed by what she witnesses, the woman keeps her visions to herself. But when Earth-eater begins an unlikely relationship with a withdrawn police officer, word of her ability begins to spread, and soon desperate members of her community beg for her help, anxious to uncover the truth about their own loved ones.
Surreal and haunting, spare yet complex, Eartheater is a dark, emotionally resonant tale told from a feminist perspective that brilliantly explores the stories of those left behind—the women enduring the pain of uncertainty, whose lives have been shaped by violence and loss.
