I devoured this book! What a beguiling, fascinating novel. Can't wait to read whatever Reyes does next.

Thanks so much to the publisher for the e-galley.

I downloaded this book back in 2020 but it was unfortunately archived before I was well enough to be able to read it so I’m unable to give feedback on it

Trying to read more short stories and novellas, I scooped this title up as the description and book cover were peculiar and interesting. The story centers around a young lady who can eat dirt touched by people and see what happens to them. Basically like a psychic but instead of using tarot cards or old jewelry, she eats the dirt at the last known location of that person. While this tinges the story with magical realism, the majority of the story has a contemporary plot and setting. Apparently, in this world, Earth Eaters are not looked upon respectfully or nicely. In the beginning, we see the girl at a younger age as she stands at her mother's funeral. She eats her dirt while others look on disapprovingly. I would compare an Earth Eater's status in this society as kind of a witch or outcast. One to be skirted around unless of course, you are in desperate need of her help. As characters that drop in and out of her life reveal. She lives with her brother in a small house in a barrio of I believe, Argentina. Quitting school early on in the story, the young woman spends her days playing video games, drinking, and listening to music to try and sleep at night. After helping a woman with a missing person's case involving her son, people start leaving bottles of dirt with notes in them at her doorstep asking for help. Very torn and weary of her talent as she encounters various struggles throughout the plot, she collects them in her back garden as a kind of decoration. The plot deepens when she decides to help the family of a missing girl which includes a police officer.

This is book has such a gritty and real atmosphere regardless of the magical realism plot point. The young woman seems to drink and ramble around her life to dull the voices of the people she's eaten dirt for and the horrible things she's seen in doing so. The author does a great job of making you feel the weariness, pain, and struggle of this young woman and her ability. The story also includes many social issues that ripple through the characters, plot, and setting.

I had a difficult time giving a succinct review for this book. I enjoyed it in that it was an original, fresh concept with outstanding characterization and setting. I felt like I breathed this book in right alongside our main character. However, it packs so many things to think about or grasp onto in such a short book that I'm honestly still kind of processing it. And that's not a bad thing.

The description and emotion that went into the scenes where the Earth Eater consumed dirt made me feel like I could taste it as well. Stellar imagery. Three out of five stars. A book that you need to let simmer and absorb.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC of this title.

This is a unique concept for a book. A woman has the ability to eat dirt and connect with violated women. I say "ability" because is it really a "gift"? People find out and come to her so they can say goodbye. It's a magical realism book, which I love, but is also a huge cry for justice for women.

Beautiful and haunting narrative. I go into books that are more experimental with a lot of expectation and this one truly met me in the middle.

I loved this book. The story and characters were compelling, and I found the hook unique. I don't want to say too much, but the novel is about a woman who has visions when she (literally) eats earth. Beautiful and surreal.

3.5/5⭐️

*translated from Spanish*

Eartheater is a bizarre novel thats sensitive and compulsive. The unnamed narrator is our protagonist who feels compelled to eat dirt after her mother dies. From that act, she “sees” the truth behind her mother’s death. Yes, she gets visions after eating the dirt, Earth. She is the Eartheater. Abandoned by her father, she lives with her aunt and her brother Walter. Word gets out and people visit her with jars of dirt looking for answers.

Ezekiel, a police officer is looking for his sister Maria. She is alive and well in Eartheater’s visions, but the mystery slowly unveils. I’m still not sure how I completely feel about the novel and characters, but its a captivating story. I wish the author included the history behind these Eartheaters.

Thank you Netgalley & HarperVia for the arc in exchange for an honest opinion.

An unnamed young woman lives in the barrios of Argentina with her older brother and her aunt. They have recently buried her beloved mother and her father has left. She responds to the need for answers the only way she knows how…by eating dirt. Unpalatable? Yes. But it tells her where people have gone and if they are alive or dead. Eartheater is her story.

When a friendly woman who lives near their high school disappears the girl goes to her yard and takes a mouthful of dirt from where the woman stood when they talked. Then she draws a detailed picture of Senorita Ana’s dead body in a junkyard. It’s enough for the aunt to move out and the girl to drop out of high school. Days pass in a twilight space of dealing with death while being a normal teenage girl who has a crush on one of her brother’s friends. People drop off bottles of dirt with money and notes begging for help in locating lost loved ones. Her brother works in a shop so they need the money, but the act of consuming dirt takes its toll. All of her senses respond to people’s last moments or worse, the horrible situations in which they are still alive.

In the same way that she is helping some people, she is angering others. She and her brother live a hand-to-mouth life in a semi-wild state of beer, Playstation 4, and leftover takeout food. When a cop shows up and wants help, she knows it marks a turning point because the police are no friends to people like her. That plus Senorita Ana haunting her dreams leaves her feeling even more adrift until events within her life and community force her into a path she doesn’t foresee.

Eartheater is a small novel, but the author’s voice conveys the rough cadence of street life, of an uneducated girl with a gift that is also a curse. A girl trapped in a world where she has virtually no control and no protection. Prophesying by eating dirt puts her in danger in a place already hostile towards young women. The plot is propulsive, but it’s the atmosphere of the novel that stayed with me. The ending feels like another beginning, but with an ambiguity that left me wanting more.

The three-part debut novel from Argentinian activist and writer Dolores Reyes, Eartheater is a dark coming-of-age tale which centres on an unnamed protagonist known only as Cometierra and depicts the brutality of everyday violence in a nameless Buenos Aires barrio. It’s earth-eating that gives Cometierra disturbing visions of the disappeared. And when word gets around about her abilities, everyone wants a piece of the earth.

Compelling and original, Eartheater picks up on the enduring (if sometimes insufferable) Latin American literary tradition of magical realism and runs with it, leaving an affecting (definitely not insufferable) narrative in its wake…albeit one that moves at a sometimes jarring pace between pizza parties with friends and hunts for the missing.

While her brother Walter and a cluster of other side characters add flavour, it’s Cometierra that holds down the narrative, pulling the reader along as she reluctantly obeys her calling to eat the earth and help those who ask it of her. This is enhanced by the somewhat staccato rhythm of Reyes’ writing in the original Spanish, a stylistic flourish replicated successfully by Julia Sanches’ English translation.

Much like Arelis Uribe’s Quiltras which I read and reviewed recently, this is writing born out of the periferias, the outskirts, where people are murdered and the authorities don’t care to involve themselves. In a year when feminist movements (and right-wing governments) have continued to gather steam across Latin America, Eartheater comes as a sobering reminder of how much there is left to do and who exactly is left to do it. Though timeless in its preoccupations of femicide and impunity, it also feels very of the moment – the system continues not to give a shit and, though victims are never lacking, answers are.

This frustrating reality of state impunity is mirrored in Eartheater’s numerous and necessary narrative loose ends – real resolution is a rarity. It’s also one highlighted by Cometierra’s burgeoning relationship with Ezequiel, a policeman who comes to her for help rather than vice versa. It says a lot about the state of policing in Latin America that I had a lingering feeling of dread deep in my belly each time he popped up.

But Eartheater is so much more than just a ~book about femicide victims~ (something Reyes herself has been vocal about). For a start, there’s tons of scope for an ecocritical reading of Eartheater, a novel so inherently concerned with “the earth, open like a wound” and our disappearing connection to it. Furthermore, Reyes explicitly aligns herself with those dealing with the aftermath of femicide from the outset. Even though the plot hinges on the mysteries of the murdered and missing, Eartheater opens with a dedication to both the living and the dead; to victims of femicide, Melina Romero and Araceli Ramos, and “its survivors”.

Throughout Eartheater, Reyes actively engages with the idea that violence – especially against women – is neither intangible nor inconsequential; rather, it affects us all, seeping into the earth around us. As she writes in the opening chapter of this novel which gives voice to the desperate, uncertain tragedy of those living in and amongst violence: “only pain seems never to die.” If you want to begin to understand the lingering repercussions of gender violence in Latin America, Eartheater is a great place to start.

This is another debut that seems impossible to me. How the hell are people just coming right out of the gate writing like this?! And I’m over here pulling my own hair out just trying to write a coherent review of their work!

Eartheater is stunning. The story revolves around a young woman who has lost everything, and is now barely scraping by in a home with her older brother. She is ostracized and feared, but also used by the people around her. As long as her gift has been known of by those in the community, they begin to leave jars of earth outside her home along with names of their lost loved ones.

Although it is unpleasant for her, she feels compelled nonetheless to eat earth at times – she certainly cannot fathom eating all of the earth that is left for her, but sometimes they just call out to her. She’s a young lady made tough by a tough life, but she is anything but uncaring.

Her developing relationship with Ezequiel, a police officer who at one point asked for her help gives her a sense of stability that she has never known before, but can she make it last?

I think what makes this story so extraordinary is the way it weaves elements of magical realism into a very mundane, very spare existence. There is nothing glamorous about living in a slum, with nobody but your brother to care about you. Especially when everyone else just wants a piece of you.

Synopsis: In the Argentinian slums, the story begins with a young girl crying about her mother's death. She wants her mother to be buried in the house, but everyone refuses. Laying on her mother's grave, the girl feels compelled to eat the dirt. So she eats mouthfuls of dirt. As she eats the dirt, she is overwhelmed with visions offering her insights into her mother's death. She sees that it was her father that beat her mother to death. People are equally awed and revolted by her capabilities. She becomes known as the Eartheater.
The girl and her brother now live with their aunt. Her aunt is unsupportive and hateful and tells her never to eat earth again. But when her favorite teacher, Ana, goes missing, she eats the dirt again. The girl can tell where the teacher's body would be found. The aunt becomes upset and leaves the girl and her brother. Left to fend for themselves, the girl does not return to school, and the brother gets a mechanic job.
The girl mostly spends her time drinking beer, listening to music, and playing video games with her brother's friends. The police are not helpful when it comes to investigating missing or murdered women. People desperate to discover what happened to their loved ones would bring the girl a jar of dirt and ask her to find them. She often hesitates when it comes to eating the dirt. She is torn between helping and being selfish. On the one hand, she wants to help these desperate people but on the other, eating dirt is not physically easy, nor does she want to add to the horrific visions she has witnessed so far.
Surprisingly, an Argentinean cop seeks out the girl for help locating a missing relative. She eats the dirt and tells where the woman is being held captive. This starts a rocky relationship between the Eartheater and the cop. They solve missing person cases and become lovers.

My Evaluation of the Book: This novel is by far the strangest story I have ever read. The main character is unnamed, and I am unsure what purpose this served the story. Fragmented moments in this girl's life make up the story, causing the story's flow to feel disjointed. This book is translated into English, which I feel affects how thoughts and ideas are portrayed. Cultural differences could also attribute to the miscommunication or understanding of this story.
I didn't understand how the brother and sister living in the slums could afford copious amounts of beer, a PlayStation, and numerous PlayStation games. They also have their own house, water, and electricity. This could be attributed to another cultural misunderstanding because I am unfamiliar with what life is like in the Argentinean slums. I was just confused.
The idea behind Eartheater is remarkable, but it just was not executed well. I really had high hopes for the story, but overall I feel like it was just a mish-mash of a girl's life experiences that you were thrown into it and then just as quickly thrown back out. The story came to an abrupt end without a significant resolution. One highlight of the book is how descriptive the author was during the Eartheater's experiences eating the dirt.

I was drawn to Eartheater by Dolores Reyes because of the unusual cover and the synopsis. I enjoy interesting supernatural stories, and this reminded me a bit of stories that I have read about Sineaters.

The book started out well, and I enjoyed the quick, some may even say chaotic, style of writing. I felt that it worked well with the 15 year old’s life. She never knew if there would be enough money, if violence would happen to her, or if those she loved would stay, so since her life is so chaotic, it makes sense that her story would be too.

I think the book could have been a lot stronger if Reyes had been able to incorporate more back story into the history of Eartheaters. Her protagonist may not have any knowledge of it, but to put in a character who did or somehow incorporate the information would have made the story a lot more interesting to me.

And once she started spending time with the police office I was happy to see that she had a sense of calm in her life and that he didn’t fear her. But there were a couple of sex scenes that felt like they were just added in to make the story more visceral or raw or something. They just completely felt out of place. Then there’s the end. It just seemed to come out of nowhere and then a character pops up and then it’s over.

I feel like Eartheater has a lot of potential, but needs to be edited a few more times to reach it.

A coming of age story with a surrealist twist. I enjoyed reading about the trials and tribulations of a dirt-eating, ghost-seeing teenage even if I was left wanting more details about her life and the people coming in and out of it.

This book kept my attention but it was so very strange. Have you ever read something just because you couldn't look away, like an accidental? The storyline was all over the place. If you have the least bit of ADHD, don't even attempt this one

I would have actually enjoyed the storyline, if it had been written different. Sorry, but not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for giving me this free ARC

This book was really hard for me to read. The writing was very choppy and it made me lost interest. I'm guessing this has to do with the translation. I did love the idea of the story.

I included Eartheater in this fall roundup for the Boston Globe: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/11/arts/fall-books-preview/

This book tells the story of a young woman with a different diet than most. Not leafy greens, but dirt. This strange compulsion gives her visions of people's lives. Unfortunately, the first time she experiences this, she finds out the horrific truth of her mother's death.

While this is strange of itself, she starts up a relationship with a police officer. Complicated, isn't it? Once people find out about her power, you can't begin to image how this will impact everyone's life she comes into contact with.

Last night I devoured in one sitting this beautiful novella: “Earth-Eater / Come Tierra” by Argentinian author Dolores Reyes. It was a captivating, beautifully written story I couldn’t put down.

In this story we meet a young woman (possibly 13) who emotionally wrecked by her mother’s death and her dad’s flight stuffs her mouth with earth from her mom’s grave only to discover it gives her visions of her mom’s death, letting her witness it as if she were there. All through the following years she’ll be able to witness the last minutes of life or current state of people who are dead or missing. Will she fight that terrifying gift or harness it for good? Is she haunted by the dead?

This is a story of grief, poverty, social inequality and violence, mainly violence exerted against women wrapped in a breath-taking thriller I cannot recommend enough. This is only Reyes’ debut novel, so what has she in store for us for the future?

CW: sexual assault, domestic violence, murder, sexually explicit.

This remarkable novel gives voice to a character unlike any I've ever met before. The young woman at the center of the story is literally no one--unnamed and impoverished--but she has a terrible skill thrust on her: After her mother dies violently, this young woman develops a compulsion to eat earth, and the ingested earth gives her true visions of how her mother died. Soon everyone has heard about and believes in her eerie skill. As she's living in an Argentinian slum where loved ones regularly disappear and violence toward women is an everyday fact, she is inundated with petitions for help. How she navigates a world where she is both shunned and respected is an extraordinary reading journey. The first-person voice of the protagonist is what makes the story so compelling: uncomplaining, clear-sighted, compassionate. A one-of-a-kind novel.