Eat the Document: A Novel - Softcover

Eat the Document is a compelling story of activism, sacrifice and the cost of living a secret. It tells the story of two lovers, passionately committed 1970s anti-war protestors who, as a consequence of choices made back then, have had to erase their pasts, forge new identities and never see each other again. Dana Spiotta illuminates the buried connections between past and present – language, music, technology and activism – with coolness and precision, creating a multi-faceted portrait of three decades in America.

‘A mesmerising journey: from bomber to motherhood, from American subversive to middle-aged widow . . . Dana Spiotta runs the narrative intrigue with assurance, linking the youth-culture disaffection of the 1970s drop-outs with the dissidence of the 1990s generation. The mental energy in this novel is absorbing. Spiotta expresses its diversity with such nuance that it makes you gasp’ Scotland on Sunday

‘Perceptive and intelligent . . . cool, verbally smart and socially astute’ Independent

‘Her prose has the calm, ghostly precision of a surgical needle . . . A dark, gripping quasi-thriller that, as it digs deep into America’s post-war counterculture, challenges as much as it beguiles’ Metro

‘A major American writer . . . the only female writer I know whose prose reminds me of the cool ambient poetry and steely precision of Don DeLillo . . . Eat the Document is as darkly exact and thrilling as the political novels of Joan Didion’ Bret Easton Ellis