I finished this strange little book last night and… what a strange little book! It’s a magical realist novel centred around ‘Eartheater’, a young woman who has visions of murdered and missing people when she eats dirt from where they have a connection or went missing. It speaks to the femicides which are still rampant in Argentina, as many of the people Eartheater has visions of are missing and murdered women, given up on by local police forces.

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The translator’s note by Julia Sanches describes the book as a mixture of Peter Pan and Lord of the Flies and I really like that analogy. There’s a definite lack of ~responsible~ adult figures in this book; instead the young folk are left to muddle their way through, stuck in a weird state somewhere between innocence and brutality. In many ways they seem like lost little kids, seemingly unaware that their fists and their knives have real consequences.

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It’s super bleak and super dark. I think it’s a great companion piece to Dead Girls by Selva Almada, which is more like true crime, with Eartheater offering a more surreal exploration of violence against women (and men) in Argentina.