Genre: Magical Realism, Literary Fiction
Author: Dolores Reyes
Translator: Julia Sanches
Year published: 2020 (English translation)
TWs: Femicide, death, drowning, violence, SA
Rating: 3.75/5
Eartheater (originally Cometierra in Spanish) was published in Argentina in 2019, where it immediately became both an editorial sensation and a political one. I can see why. It’s the kind of book that gets under your skin, sometimes in ways you’re not entirely prepared for.
‘No blue was the same and no earth tasted alike. No child, sibling, mother, or friend was missed like another.’
Synopsis (always spoiler-free)
Set in an unnamed slum on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, ‘Eartheater’ follows a young unnamed woman who discovers, after the death of her mother, that when she eats earth, she has visions. Not pleasant ones. The dirt shows her what happened to the women and children who have gone missing, who have been murdered, whose names the police file and forget.
At first, she keeps this to herself. She lives with her brother Walter, drinks beer, plays video games, tries to survive adolescence in a neighbourhood where violence is not extraordinary but mundane. But word gets out. Families start appearing at her gate, pressing bottles of soil into her hands and begging for answers, for closure, for confirmation of what they already fear. Dragged reluctantly into a relationship with a withdrawn local police officer, Eartheater finds herself caught between a gift she never asked for and a world that cannot stop producing reasons to use it.
‘The earth, open like a wound.’
My Thoughts
There’s a question at the heart of ‘Eartheater’ that Dolores Reyes never explicitly asks, but which the novel refuses to stop pressing: what happens to violence that goes unwitnessed? Not detectives and courtrooms and neat resolutions, but the raw, intimate kind. The kind where a whole neighbourhood knows what happened but has nowhere to put that knowledge. Reyes’ answer is, essentially, that it seeps into the ground. It stays there, held inside the earth, waiting.
And look, that’s not a metaphor the novel is shy about, it’s the entire premise. But far from feeling heavy-handed, it actually works, because Reyes treats the magical realism not as a literary device but as a lived reality. Our narrator doesn’t philosophise about her gift. She’s annoyed by it. It exhausts her. She’d much rather be eating sausages on the sofa with Walter and watching TV. The supernatural is just another burden placed on a young woman who already has too many, and framing it that way is, I think, the smartest decision Reyes made.
It’s also what sets ‘Eartheater’ apart from other fiction that engages with femicide. The novel isn’t primarily about the women who’ve been killed: it’s about the ones who remain. The sisters, the mothers, the neighbours left behind holding bottles of earth, unable to grieve without answers. Reyes shifts the lens away from the violence itself and onto the quiet, grueling aftermath of it, and in doing so she makes an argument that the real crisis isn’t only the murder, but the silence that follows it.
I did struggle a bit with the pacing in the middle section, which can feel circular and a little repetitive, but overall I enjoyed Reyes’ writing style. There’s short chapters, terse dialogue and very little embellishment which kept it moving along. I think another beautiful aspect of this novel was that it was written as a dedication to the memory of Melina Romero and Araceli Ramos, two teenage girls murdered near the Buenos Aires school where Reyes teaches. That dedication changes the way you read everything that follows, and I don’t think it was meant to be comforting, but rather an effort to make sure you were uncomfortable.
So, if you’re looking for a novel that uses magical realism to ask some very real questions about the justice system and institutional silence, this one is worth your time!
Happy Reading!
About the Author
Dolores Reyes was born in Buenos Aires in 1978, where she studied classical literature at the University of Buenos Aires. She’s a teacher, feminist activist, and mother of seven. Eartheater was her debut novel and an immediate phenomenon in Argentina, selling out repeatedly and sparking conversations about femicide, institutional failure, and the role literature plays in bearing witness.
The English translation was named one of the best books of 2020 by Time, Vulture, and The Boston Globe, among others, and earned praise from Argentine literary figures including Mariana Enríquez and Gabriela Cabezón Cámara.
Find more on her Goodreads page!
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