Eartheater

August 10, 2020
A high school dropout reluctantly uses her clairvoyant power to find missing women and children in Argentinian writer Reyes’s lurid debut. The unnamed narrator develops a habit of eating dirt in the wake of her mother’s violent death, earning her the name Eartheater and shame for her family, especially the aunt now raising her and her older brother, Walter. When a beloved teacher goes missing, the young teenage narrator eats the dirt from the school’s courtyard and draws an explicit picture of the teacher’s body outside of a nightclub, which gets her sent to the principal. After the teacher’s body is discovered where the narrator drew her, the aunt leaves the siblings to fend for themselves, and the narrator drops out of school while Walter supports them both by working as a mechanic. The narrator prefers to drink beer and play video games with Walter and his friends from their unnamed barrio, and occasionally accepts cash for her visions from family members of missing people. Reyes crafts an alluring, unsettling edge to the plot developments, including the narrator’s first sexual experiences and the city’s pervasive violence, by collapsing the narrator’s age and the passage of time, preserving aspects of her young girlhood and her angst-ridden teenage years as she grows older. Reyes’s coming-of-age portrait stands out for her unflinching look at a teen’s exploration of sex and death.

Starred review from September 1, 2020
In the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Eartheater is ostracized by her gift: she sees the fates of the missing when she ingests earth connected to them. First, her aunt flees when Eartheater reveals that her father, who disappeared after killing her mother, is alive. Then, when her teacher, Se�orita Ana, disappears, a taste of playground earth leads to her battered body. For years, Eartheater avoids the allure of the earth until she's persuaded by a mother's pain to reveal another killer. This, of course, draws other pleas in the form of bottles of earth deposited at her gate, but Eartheater remains repulsed by the pain they hold until Ezequiel, a young cop, enlists her to find his missing cousin. When the girl is rescued, Eartheater finds purpose in her sight and unlikely love with Ezequiel until a friend's murder reveals Se�orita Ana's killer, and Eartheater becomes an instrument of death instead of its herald. A powerful story whose narrator wields brutally honest observations on the intersections of class, poverty, and gender. Reyes' debut is a strong addition to the growing body of Latin American crime fiction in the U.S. market. A stirring genre blend of fantasy and crime fiction that combines graceful prose and magic realism.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2020
In a violent Argentinian slum, a schoolgirl reckons with the clairvoyant experiences she has while eating earth: vivid visions of missing women and children. When her mother dies, the unnamed narrator develops an unusual compulsion to eat dirt and discovers the truth of her mother's killing, in all its betrayal and brutality. The earth, she finds, bestows her with visions of other people--murdered or missing, dead or alive--an ability that earns her the admonishment of her aunt, who grows crueler as word of the girl's abilities spreads. When a young teacher disappears, the narrator eats earth from the schoolyard for answers, which are revealed in a drawing she makes depicting the teacher's naked body, tied to posts outside a warehouse. The body is discovered in the precise location of the drawing, and, fed up with the humiliation her niece has brought upon their family, the aunt leaves the girl and her older brother, Walter, to raise themselves. As she tries to live with some semblance of normality--dropping out of school, playing video games and drinking beer with Walter and his friends, experiencing first love--the young woman struggles with her earth-eating habit, craving it yet repelled by what it shows her. Out of need, though, she accepts money from people whose loved ones have gone missing, including a stoic and aloof police officer, in whom she unexpectedly finds an ally and romantic companion. In a voice that is terse, blunt, and biting, the narrator reckons with the impact of her visions on her health and relationships, as she witnesses more and more the ways fear and violence shape the experiences of the women in her community. Compelling and visceral, Reyes' debut combines mystery and coming-of-age to evoke the stories of the victims of femicide.

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Starred review from October 1, 2020

DEBUT When a girl from an Argentine slum eats the dirt in which her dead mother has been buried, she starts having visions of people missing or dead. Paramount among them is her teacher, Se�orita Ana, gang-raped and murdered, who offers guidance while badgering her to track down her killers. The Eartheater, as the protagonist becomes known, is both shunned for her sometimes danger-inducing behavior--her sort-of boyfriend and the aunt who initially took responsibility for her and her brother quickly leave--and sought out by people desperate to locate loved ones, giving her dirt associated with them to eat. The missing are mostly women, as first-time Argentine novelist Reyes highlights the numerous awful incidents of femicide in Latin America. Among them is Maria, whose case gets the Eartheater involved with Ezequiel, a steady policeman she initially distrusts, and the book ends in a moment of heady vengeance. VERDICT The premise might initially be hard to swallow, but Reyes succeeds in making the feisty Eartheater and her visions both persuasive and affecting. Kudos to Sanches for effectively rendering Argentine slang.

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