Eat the Document: A Novel [Paperback]

An ambitious and powerful story about idealism, passion, and sacrifice,Eat the Documentshifts between the underground movement of the 1970s and the echoes and consequences of that movement in the 1990s.

A National Book Award finalist,Eat the Documentis a riveting portrait of two eras and one of the most provocative and compelling novels of recent years.Group Reading Guide
Eat the Document
Dana Spiotta
If you want to change your life, first change your name.
In the heyday of the 1970s underground, Mary Whittaker and Bobby DeSoto were the quintessential political activists -- in love with each other and their cause. But when a radical protest against the Vietnam War ended in tragedy, they vowed to never see each other again and start anew by changing their names and identities.
Now a fugitive on-the-run, Mary keeps the truth, and the authorities, at bay by altering her image, dying her hair, and never staying too long in one place. Mary reinvents herself as Caroline Sherman, and then takes the name (and social security number) of a dead infant named Louise Barrot. It's now the 1990s, and Louise lives with her teenage son Jason in the suburbs of Seattle -- a son she hardly knows but who revels in the music of her day. Jason becomes suspect of his mother's strange ways, and with the power of technology, he puts together the pieces of her secret past.
Shifting between the protests in the 1970s and the consequences of those choices in the 1990s,Eat the Documentis an unflinching examination of the polarities -- from rebellion and subculture to advertising and trends -- that can define a generation.

Questions for Discussion

1. One of the prominent themes inEat the Documentis that of identity. For Mary Whittaker, her identity was more habit and will than anything more intrinsic (10). Who do you think the real Mary is and how did she manage to conl³.