Dana Spiotta -- Eat The Document

The title of Dana Spiotta's latest novel comes from a long-lost, never released Bob Dylan album. That album, a document itself, is an apt metaphor for the life of Spiotta's protagonist, Mary Whittaker. The novel begins somewhere in the middle of Mary's story and wanders all around the years between the Vietnam War and the present day. Spiotta's crisscrossing of times and narrators creates a remarkable tension. As readers, we learn about Mary just an inch at a time. We trace her life through three names and at least as many lives. We watch her develop from an anti-war rebel (who made a major mistake) to a quasi-criminal mind to a waitress/underground felon running from the promise of prison. Finally, though, Mary is a mother with a past, whose teenage son first realizes she is not the woman he thought she was when she stops at the door of her room and has a languorously intelligent conversation with him about the magic of the Beach Boys. You'll catch references to arcane things throughout Eat the Document, things that existed in the past, no longer as concrete things, but still stuck (and hard contained) in the minds of their creators. Mary suffers from a secret, faces living a "normal" (i.e. consumerist, capitalist, small) life, and deals with the loss of love. In all this, Spiotta manages to create a very natural story: It is believable, uneasy, mildly violent, lovesick and beautifully written. (Laura Leffler James) Grade: A