Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

by Vendela Vida

Far, far north, sitting above the Arctic Circle, Lapland is a world made of ice; a place both foreign and perilous that unexpectedly lures New Yorker Clarissa Iverton from what had finally become a comfortable life. At 14, her mother disappeared. Now 28, and just days after the death of her father, Clarissa discovers that he wasn't her father after all, and the only clues to her true heritage are a world away. Abandoning her fiancé, she flies to Helsinki, seeking to uncover the secrets her mother kept for so long. While piecing together the fragments of her mother's mysterious past, Clarissa is led to the Sami, Lapland's native "reindeer people," who dwell in a stark and frozen landscape, under the northern lights. It is there that she must summon the courage to confront an unbearable truth, and the violent act that ties her to this ancient people.

Vida's second novel is the riveting story of an unthinkable quest. Her indomitable heroine, Clarissa Iverton, slowly and painfully (but not without a sense of humor) peels away years of old lies in order to embrace a history she could never have imagined. Sharply focused and beautifully told, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name is an ambitious and accomplished work of fiction that resonates with the themes of truth and forgiveness.

(Spring 2007 Selection)

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Novels, Mystery, Adult

226 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Vendela Vida is the award-winning author of four books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers, and a founding editor of The Believer magazine. She is also the co-editor of Always Apprentices, a collection of interviews with writers, and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. As a fellow at the Sundance Labs, she developed Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name into a script, which received the Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award. Two of Vida’s novels have been New York Times Notable Books of the year, and she is the winner of the Kate Chopin Award, given to a writer whose female protagonist chooses an unconventional path. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two children, and since 2002 has served on the board of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring lab for youth.

Reviews

[TK421 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve mentioned once or thrice that where I work we have constant book donations coming in, and before we add them to our collection I get to peruse them and take what I want to read. It’s a fringe benefit that has saved me hundreds of dollars. Anyways, the other day a box of books showed up on my desk with a note. It said: Thought you might like these. No name was attached. It was like a mystery. Who would send me these books? What could be in this box that someone else might think I wanted to read?

When I unloaded the box of books on my desk, I found that most of the titles related to the “chick-lit” variety. My excitement waned. I’m not much into reading the feely-feel good type of stuff. I took the books and placed them back in the box and then set the box out on a community table. I returned to my desk and found that I had forgotten a book. LET THE NORTHERN LIGHTS ERASE YOUR NAME by Vendela Vida. An author I had never heard of before. I don’t know why I exactly turned the book over to read the synopsis, but when I did I saw that George Saunders gave an endorsement of how wonderful the writing style was. He mentioned something about how the Spartan-quality of the writing showed that impacting novels need not be verbose. I turned to the first chapter and read it. (The chapters are short: 1-3 pages each.) He was right. The writing was beautiful. Over the next two days, I stole whatever time I had and read the book, neglecting all my other reading in the process.

The story is simple: a woman tries to piece her life back together after having suffered the emotional effects of a mother running out on her when she was still a girl; a father who passes away, but is later revealed not to be her father at all; and a mystery that brings her to Lapland, a place above the Arctic Circle. This storyline does not do justice to how wonderful this novel is. In fact, I dare say that the storyline is only a means to conveying what the real story is: How do we handle being alone when we get older? Sure all of us at one time or another during college relished our newly found freedom, thinking that life could not get any better. But, and I am not ashamed to admit this, the ability to come back to a family, people that know you, love you, want to be with you, was never too far from my mind. It was a safety blanket that kept the bitterness of loneliness at bay.

Vida remarkably describes these feelings and scenarios through prose that zings across the page. More than once I thought about Hemingway’s writing while I read this. But Vida has heart and compassion and truth, qualities I find lacking in Hemingway. The prose is crushing at times, leaving the reader feeling as if they have intentionally buried themselves in a snowdrift, but can’t get out…desperate now to find a way to survive. These moments of claustrophobia add a dimension to the story that makes the characters more than three dimensional; it makes them seem as if the reader could be starring in this story. The descriptions are sometimes surreal but never garish as if trying to say: Look at me! Don’t you see how clever I can be when I describe something?

It is not until the last thirty pages or so that the build up of the novel truly forms itself. In a way, it might be prudent to say that the first 190 pages or so where just exposition for this final showdown. (I don’t do spoilers, so I apologize for the vagueness.) And when I finished, last night, down in my home office, I quietly shut the book and thought about my father and mother and brothers and sisters and wondered what they were doing, how their lives are so mysterious to me since we all became adults. These thoughts made me very melancholy and I ached for their voices. I just wanted to say hi, ask about their children, their days, what’s new. But it was late and I was left with only my thoughts and the ticking sound of a clock. Perhaps this novel is better defined as a ghost-story for the reader, or a fragile family epic.

Intrigued, I decided to look on the internet to see what reviews I could find about the book. There aren’t many. But what I did find was this: Vendela Vida is married to Dave Eggers. I’ve never read a full Eggers book, but I can say this with the utmost confidence: If ever asked who the writer in the family is, Ms. Vida can confidently stand and say: Me.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

[Esil · Rating 4 out of 5]

What rock have I been hiding under that I hadn't heard of Vendela Vida until recently. I have a few GR friends to thank for bringing this author to my attention. And I'm very grateful. I just finished Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, and definitely plan to read Vida's other books in 2016. Clarissa's mother abandoned her family when Clarissa was 14. At the beginning of the book, Clarissa is 30 and the man she had thought was her father dies, after which she finds out that he wasn't in fact her father. She then goes on a quest to Lapland, Finland, to figure out who her father is. I won't say more about the story because I don't want to give away any spoilers and in any event the plot is really besides the point. Through sparse prose, Vida conveys a powerful sense of character, place and feeling. Clarissa, her background and what she finds in Finland defy convention and stereotypes, but they evoke recognizable emotional pain and human complexity. Dark with an odd hopeful end. Well worth reading. Again, thank you to Julie and other GR friends for helping me discover Vida.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is sometimes very hard to explain why a book affects one the way it does. This was such a perfect little book, quiet and unassuming ,but an in depth study of a young woman's mind when she finds out that everything she believes in, is not the truth. Clarissa's mother abandoned her, her father and mentally challenged brother, when she was fourteen. After her father dies she makes the shocking discovery that he was not her real father, that her mother had been married before to a Sami priest. Her fiance apparently knew the truth and kept it from her as well. Reeling from a double betrayal, she sets out in an attempt to find answers.

Her travels take her to Lapland, the indigenous Sami people, reindeer herders with a very distinctive look. Of course I had to google to find pictures and Wiki for more information on the Sami. Google and Wiki, sounds almost like a dance. Even though this is an exotic locale, not many descriptions are to be found, only those that Clarissa sees, since most of the action is her thoughts, her feelings and her impressions. We journey with her to the ice hotel and it is here that we finally get answers along with Clarissa. Now that she has closed off her past, the only available option is for her to make a new future.

I liked the short paragraphs, the straightforward writing, and seeing things just from Clarissa's view. Not that I agreed with everything she did, but I did understand why she felt that way. The writing is wonderful, and I liked that it had a different kind of ending. Not happily ever after, all answers as she wanted them, but a different future that she makes, one that allows her to move forward.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Clarissa was going through papers after her father died, she found a copy of her birth certificate showing that he was not her birth father. Her mother had walked out the door when Clarissa was a teenager, leaving without a trace. She felt that the important people in her life had not told her the truth. Clarissa wanted to know her true identity and she traveled to Lapland to search for her birth father.

In northern Norway she unearthed some of the secrets that had been hidden from her. She lived with the indigenous Sami with a family that herded reindeer. Clarissa found some surprising things about her past--events that had haunted her troubled mother. An ancient Sami healer helped her make connections to her mother's past. After learning the truth, Clarissa has to decide if she is going to identify herself by her past, or move on and just look toward her future.

Although the book had some heavy themes, it also had some humorous moments. The winter setting in Lapland was cold and dark. But it was also magical, especially the Ice Hotel and the Northern Lights. I enjoyed Vendela Vida's writing, and would like to read more of her books.

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty, this is a quest novel about abandoning who you are or have been and eventually free-falling into a new life. It’s tautly written and, in a way, as icy as the Lapland terrain where much of it takes place. It’s a good story. I was never bored. Nor was I emotionally swept away. Nevertheless I enjoyed the book.

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perfect polar vortex reading. No need to travel to Lapland for constant flurries and ice. A spare, brittle, quick read. Lots of white space. One of those books with two pages on either side of a standalone chapter title page, so at the end of every chapter you're shot ahead five pages, which makes it seem longer and quicker -- turning blank pages maybe also creates some space in a reader's brain. My particular brain has been suffering some freeze lately. Unable to make it through a few dense novels I've started recently thanks to impatient skim impulse disorder and a recurring case of the zone outs. Maybe binging on too much "Breaking Bad" on Netflix? Maybe generally distracted by the upcoming NBA draft only four months off? Maybe brain is frozen and reading circulation constricted by long johns? Regardless, minor seasonal affective anhedonia these days synched with this one's damaged narrator, and generally I enjoyed reading this even if I wasn't always on its side. Felt to me for the most part like a young adult novel, which is not my bag, which isn't this novel's fault. Excessive similes early on seemed like the author, not the narrator, was trying too hard to win the reader over to the powers of her perception. Early on, but not throughout, there's a good deal of associative sensory perception (eg, clothes after long airplane travel smell vaguely of Band Aids), suggestive literary flourishes that characterize but -- for me at least -- seem to insufficiently stand in for explicit insight. Felt like critiques received from early-draft readers were integrated as narrator's awareness of scenes' shortcomings (can't find specific examples but I mean comments along the lines of "How obvious" inserted after a line of dialogue). The author's husband has traveled to Africa (What is the What) and the Middle East (A Hologram for the King) to write his novels -- similarly it seems like this one benefited from travel to the Finnish Arctic (in the interview at the end she says she traveled to the setting a few times), which is cool, sure, but local color wasn't enough to suspend my disbelief. Thanks to formal choices I was too aware throughout that I was reading contemporary literary fiction -- therefore violence in the narrator's past and her mother's past, particularly their parallel, seemed included by the author, imposed upon the characters instead of something real for them. I enjoyed the sly, slow-burn, quiet humor, and I liked how low-gear narrative drive reinforced the book's frozen atmosphere -- but I think I wanted some different textures or densities maybe? Anyway, glad I read it but not sure how much I'll remember it. As our poet friend Percy Bysshe once said, "If winter comes can spring be far behind?" Here's to the inevitable thaw!

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name is kind of a cold-climate twin of The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty. In both books, a heroine learns a dramatic family secret. In both books, learning the secret causes her to set off alone for distant locales without letting anyone know where she's going. In both books, Vendela Vida takes a location I've never been to and makes me never want to go there ever.

However, as with actual twins, there are a few differences between the novels. In Diver's Clothes, we don't find out the secret until late in the novel; in Northern Lights we learn the secret in the beginning, at the same time the narrator does. In Diver's Clothes the narrator's identity keeps shifting; in Northern Lights it's another character's identity that keeps shifting--although every time that character's identity shifts, it has an impact on the narrator's identity as well. Identity, identity, identity. Vendela Vida wants to know: Who are we when we realize that nothing is the way we thought it was?

I'm not sure Vendela Vida actually has the answer to this question, but she sure knows how to make the asking of it entertaining. Her books have a unique page-turning quality despite their heavy subject matter. I think it's because, frankly, she doesn't get bogged down in talking about feelings. This has caused some to accuse her books or heroines of being cold and unfeeling, but I don't agree. Vida tells us what happens, and in the telling, we can see exactly how the characters feel. There's something organic about it: We're not forced to any kind of conclusions, but Vida is so skilled we usually arrive at the right ones anyway. My understanding is that the other two novels she's written are in exactly the same vein as the two I've mentioned here. If that's the case, sign me up. My preoccupations and Vida's are the same.

[Iris P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

How far will you to go to try to unravel family secrets that have profoundly affected your life?
Travel across continents? Traverse a few times zones? Brave indomitable weather? Go all the way to the end of the world?

That last sentence doesn't seem too farfetched to describe Lapland, the Scandinavian region where Finland, Norway and Sweden merge. This is the place, which is located above the Arctic Circle that serves as the main setting for this beautifully crafted novel.

With its natural beauty and fable-like atmosphere (there's a freaking ice hotel featured in this story people!), the place has an otherworldly aura that at times feel eerie and at others magical and transcendent.

Frequently in literature a journey, whether described in the literal or spiritual sense, is used as a metaphor that might represent a process (a physical travel) or an undertaking (discovering a life's calling or pursuing a higher level of spiritual enlightenment for example).



Northern lights (Aurora Borealis) Lapland, Finland

For Clarissa Iverton, the 28 year-old protagonist of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, that journey is a process that represents her search for identity and familial origins, her specific goal is to learn the truth about her mother's mysterious past.

As the novel begins, Clarissa has just landed at the Helsinki airport. After the death of the man she always thought of as her father, she discovers that the person named in her birth certificate as her biological father is actually Eero Valkeapää, a Sami priest who lives in Finnish Lapland and who unknown to her, was her mother's first husband.

Clarissa's mother disappeared when she was only 14 years-old, so she's unable to talk to the only person that probably has all the answers she craves after learning of this stunning development.

For the young Clarissa the way her mother vanished was particularly traumatic, during an afternoon when the two of them are Christmas shopping, Olivia leaves a cold goodbye message with a store clerk "She said to tell you she got tired of waiting".

After Clarissa discovers that her childhood friend, now fiancé Pankaj, was privy to her parent's secret, she decides to walk way from the conveniences of her modern life in Manhattan to track Eero and find out who she really is.



Vendela Vida - The Author

As readers sometimes we find ourselves surprised by very peculiar coincidences. After never hearing of "The Samis", somehow I found them mentioned in the last two novels I've read.

In The Portable Veblen, a novel that also has an interesting Norwegian connection, Dr. Paul Vreeland, one of the main protagonists ends up living among "the Sami people of Norway, one of the most peaceful people of the planet".

So I took this serendipitous development to learn a little bit about these captivating tribes.
The Samis, are the indigenous people of Northern Scandinavia. They settled in Lapland more than 4,000 years ago. They populated the northern regions of the Scandinavian peninsula from Norway to Russia, speak 10 languages that include about 400 words for reindeer -their traditional livelihood- and at least one word that has found its way into English parlance: "Tundra".

Perhaps because this is a very short novel, the story of the Samis is explored somehow superficially and serves mainly as a device to advance the novel's narrative. Still during the time Clarissa lives among the native people, she will experience some peculiar adventures, from a visit to an Ice Hotel, to drinking reindeer blood which she says "Tastes like electricity", to a snowmobile trip across the tundra.



The Jukkasjarvi Ice hotel in Sweden

After a very long journey that includes a somehow depressing but eventful sexual encounter with a virtual stranger, Clarissa arrives in Inari and is able to locate Eero. The priest confirms that in fact he was her mother's first husband but the plot only thickens after this.

Eventually Clarissa will also get to know Anna Kristine, an elderly Sami healer who has her own secrets as well as a Henrik, an amiable reindeer herder who quickly becomes a reliable ally.

As she continues to get more clues to help unravel the mystery, Inari will be only the first of several places Clarissa will visit before she gets to know the truth. And as she travels further north, her state of mind and overall mood will progressively match the darker landscape that surrounds her.

This novel certainly has an overall dour, gloomy tone but I also enjoyed Vida's sardonic sense of humor.
During one scene while visiting Eero, he decides to show off his neighborhood Christmas's decorations. Every house they see is displaying white Christmas lights, "Everyone is very upset with that house," he tells Clarissa, pointing to the one house with blue lights around its front door. "Those people really took it too far."

Although the ending felt a little hasten and I was left longing for a more detailed conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this atmospheric novel. Clarissa's journey is about her search for identity but it's also about her ability to put her past behind and become a new person, capable of achieving happiness and fulfillment.



Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) in Rovaniemi, Finland

So I loved this novel, from it's title -borrowed from a poem by Marry Ailonieida Somby, a member of one of the Sami tribes- its caustic humor and its description of Lapland's breathtaking wilderness, a landscape that seem to reflect the complex emotional state of its protagonist.

I read Vida's The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty a while ago, and found it if anything even more engaging than Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. I look forward to reading her other works of fiction.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

SPOILER ALERT: There is no way I can discuss my mixed feelings about this book without revealing key plot developments.

The good: This is a beautifully written novel with a compelling flow, inventive use of language, and at times brilliant descriptions of people and places.

The bad: This is fashioned as a resurrection story, but it didn't feel that way to me at all. Instead, I'd say it is a story about escape and disavowal of responsibility, masquerading as resurrection.

The narrator is a young woman who, at story's start, has just lost her father to a sudden heart attack, and is being comforted by her fiance when she discovers her birth certificate -- and the fact that the man who just died is not her father. This, compounded by the fact that her mother abandoned her when she was 14, and her brother is severely disabled and institutionalized, appears to send our protagonist over the edge, and without telling anyone, she flees for Finland.

That is where the birth certificate tells her that her father will be. Eventually, she finds her way to Lapland and her father, a Sami priest. The Sami are like our Native Americans, and reindeer are their livelihood and cultural touchstone. The priest, of course, turns out not to be her father. He tells her the sad tale of how she was actually conceived in an act of rape.

Driven by her demons, she goes to the place where the rape occurred, with the vague notion of discovering her mother's attacker, and instead, in a most improbable way, discovers her long-lost mother, who makes it abundantly clear in a painfully restrained reunion scene that she wants little to do with her daughter and who seems to feel little remorse.

OK, sounds thoroughly depressing and as dark as the far north winter, right? Except at the end, Vida decides to send her character to another part of the world, where, pregnant with her abandoned fiance's child, she takes another job, meets and marries another man, and narrates a justification for all this, all without telling her new family her real history.

I think we are supposed to believe that this woman went through hell and came out the other side with a new wholeness. But all I saw was a woman who abandoned the father of her child, much as her mother had -- and her fiance, by the way, is described as unerringly kind and good. We are supposed to believe she made something better out of her life than her mother did. I wish I could believe it.

I so much want to hear from anyone else who has read this book, and whether you share these feelings or came away with a completely different take. A good novelist like Vida can get you to see inside another person and empathize with her. She can't get you to admire her values.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, but it never quite hooked me emotionally. At the same time, it was easy to lose myself in it, and a quick, interesting read. A lot of points felt intentionally unresolved, which bugged me some. I felt sorry for all the characters that Clarissa ditched on her literal/metaphorical journey. The sense of place was great, and the characters were often compelling (except, sometimes, Clarissa herself). But the language felt a little too self-consciously almost cute sometimes - cute is not the right word, but the closest I can come. Things like, "I pulled out two loud-ticking alarm clocks I'd come across when furtively packing, and held one clock up to each ear. All I could hear was time." Part of me wants to like that, but really only if Clarissa then makes fun of herself for thinking it. Not if she just ends the moment there.

Overall, though, I did like it - and I wouldn't discourage anyone from giving it a try if it sounds interesting. I'm just not going to run around raving about it.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the blurb, this was more about the mother than the father and hence it left me infuriated and wrecked.  

Damaged people having children and damaging them in turn.  It's fairly familiar literary terrain, and Vida writes about it in a detached way, so I was mainly along for the ride to Lapland, not particularly expecting an emotional punch to the gut, but the final quarter did me in.   

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up

[Dianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story - simple, spare, and beautifully told. Vida writes such interesting and complex female characters without overdoing it.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I own all of Vendela Vida's books. Even before I read her first book, "The Lovers", I've
admired work that both she and her 'author/ husband' Dave Eggers have been doing in the world ... starting years back in San Francisco with a tutoring program for children.

I love Vendela's simplistic & eloquent writing ....
In "The Lover", Yvonne starts over in Turkey after her husband died. (where they had
honeymooned 28 years prior)... She returns hoping to immerse herself in memories of their happy time...but things become more complicated ....

A common theme of starting over begins in this 2nd novel: "Let the Northern Lights
Erase Your Name". Clarissa's father has just died - but discovers he wasn't her real father after all. I got drawn in as fast as I did with "The Lovers".
She leaves her fiancé, Pankaj, and goes to Finland. Her mother left her when she was 14 also -- and is living in Lapland. Many buses later after her plane landed at the Helsinki airport ....she finds her mother hoping to find out about her biological father.

Clarissa has been betrayed by both her parents......which is sad in itself...but she has a fight in her -- to discover who she is. The Sami people of Lapland welcome her - are nourishing.

This book has the same dreamlike feeling as "The Lovers"....prose and imagery are lovely!!!!! All of Vendela's novels can each be read in a few hours -- a relaxing meditative type of unique reading experience.

3.7

[Pia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm on the prowl for books about mothers leaving their daughters and this novel doesn't pull any punches. The narrator's voice is funny, worried, caustic, and she's insistent about going to the source for an answer. The story takes you to Finland and farther north, and the characters and landscape and outcome are frozen now in my memory. Vendela's sentences are compressed and multi-layered, a schooling in diction, rhythm, spareness and unfettered beauty.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was more a novella- a finish it in one sitting sort of read. It slim size and spare style belie a great depth, however. I am also estranged from my mother; though our histories are very different, I could relate Clarissa's rage, antipathy, guarding of her heart and her rejection of the central characters in her immediate past. The ending was satisfying- closure followed by opening; an ending greeted with a beginning. Good stuff, this.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

After I finished reading Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida, I ruminated on it for a few days. I didn't much like it, but why? Were the reasons that I didn't like it more indicative of the book being good, or being bad? After all, much of my ambivalence came from my disapproval of the choices that the main character, Clarissa, made. If these poor choices were entirely within Clarissa's character -- if the author, Ms. Vida -- created a consistent and believable portrait of a young woman, is that not to Ms. Vida's credit? After all, what I did like very much about the book was the way that Ms. Vida endowed even her very minor characters with distinctive and consistent personalities that she painted with just a few deft strokes (I also quite liked Ms. Vida's prose and her evocative descriptions). Perhaps my disapproval of Clarissa's choices is the best evidence that Ms. Vida created a memorable character in writing about Clarissa.

The book opens with Clarissa's father's death. Her mother ran out on Clarissa and her father and her younger, retarded brother years ago -- they never knew where she had gone or why she left, and eventually assumed that she was dead. As she mourns her father and clears out his desk, Clarissa finds and reads her own birth certificate for the first time and makes a horrible discovery: the man she thought was her father was not. Her real father is somewhere in Finland, in Lapland, one of the indigenous Sami people. Clarissa runs away to Finland to find her biological father without telling her fiance she is leaving, much like her own mother did. Clarissa eventually finds out who her father is, and, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, having been befriended and aided by her father's family, runs away from them, too, just as she did to her fiance and just as her mother did to her. The last few pages of the book form kind of a whirlwind of an epilogue, where we learn that Clarissa never returns to her fiance, but eventually meets and marries a man to whom she is dishonest just as her parents were to her, to whom she only tells the incomplete story of part of her past. These all are choices of which I disapprove.

And so we come back to my mother's recipe for what makes a good book: "plot," said my mother, "and character development, and some kind of interior growth and change for the characters." (See my review of Joanne Harris's Five Quarters of the Orange.) Ms. Vida's got "plot" in spades. She's also got a powerful lot of "character development." But where she falls short -- and where my disapproval of Clarissa's choices points to Ms. Vida's shortcomings rather than to her strengths -- is "interior growth and change for the characters." I understand that Clarissa was hurt and shattered by her mother's leaving and by her parents' dishonesty in not telling her the truth about her parentage. I understand that, greiving her father twofold (once for his death, and once for her loss of him as father) she could be so distraught as to run out on her poor fiance and not tell him where she was going or when or if she'd come back. But then -- after finding her father, after finding the truth about herself and her mother, after going on a truly enormous voyage of discovery and self-discovery -- Clarissa continues to repeat her mistakes and her mother's mistakes, committing the same crimes of dishonesty and abandonment on her poor fiance (and retarded brother?), her biological father's family, and on her future husband that we learn about in the last few pages. No interior growth or change there.

I don't want to read a book that illustrates the truth of that aphorism that those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it. I want to read a book where the main character does learn from the past and chooses not to repeat it.

[Wyndy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finnish Lapland was a deliciously cold place to visit, especially the Ice Hotel, on a couple of brutally humid 98-degree days. But I did not appreciate reading the story of the mother, Olivia, repeated virtually verbatim in the story of the daughter, Clarissa. Two rapes in successive generations? Two wordless, noteless, callous desertions? Two “retards”? Ugh. Also, I’m no ‘f’ word prude but it should be used sparingly and judiciously - this is simply in-your-face: “Your fucking mom knows who my fucking father is and I don’t? What the fuck is this? Does the fucking florist who can’t even fucking spell know?” I’m really surprised, for this and other reasons, that Goodreads has this novel tagged as ‘Literary Fiction.’ Then again, I’m in the vast minority of readers who didn’t like this book - the New York Times Book Review named it ‘A Notable Book Of The Year.’

1.5 stars rounded up because the overall writing was good enough for me to finish, and I did like the setting, the Sami priest Eero Valkeapää, and the old woman Anna Kristine. But I don’t plan to revisit this author.

[Sull · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was interesting, but not richly rewarding. I really liked the premise, of a sort of mysteriously multi-cultural girl searching for her possible roots in Lapland. But there seemed something sloppy & half-developed about the narrative.

Somehow I'm not surprised to find that the author is married to Dave Eggars & is a magazine founder & editor. The novel is maybe a good magazine story, maybe.... It had very interesting, modern bits--flirting, drinking & partying in strange foreign villages, then sleeping the hangover off to continue the searching for the father--and lots of unconvincing co-incidences that forwarded the story fast but didn't persuade me that this account was any more than a swift dream of exoticism.

I'd try another of her stories, just to see if there's any change to more depth, but I'm not sure I'd read with much hope, just blind curiosity.

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the books I've read so far during 2022, this has been my favorite. I liked the voice of Clarissa, the main character. The setting, Lapland, is unusual for a novel The pacing was perfect for the story, and I appreciated the author's use of wry humor that I found helped to diffuse some of the grief inherent in the story.

[Chana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't care for this story of 'who the hell am I?' When a young woman's father dies she finds out that he is not actually her father. Her mother had left years earlier, disappeared to who knows where. She finds out that her boyfriend of many years had known that her father wasn't her father. She feels betrayed by everyone and so she, wait for it....takes off, telling no one where she is going. She travels to the back of beyond, to Lapland, looking for her father. She is obnoxious, extremely childish, rude...so rude! She can barely care for herself. Besides the identity problem, there are rape problems; she has been raped, her mother has been raped. I know it is a common occurrence in the world but it still kind of opens up a yawning pit of despair in my head. Obviously don't like reading about rape very much. I could have given that a pass. So, back to the story, our young woman Clarissa, does find out her identity, and more. A lot of people really liked this story, I just didn't.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I enjoyed this throughout and was entertained by Vida’s story, writing and humor, it seemed too lightweight to rate more than 3 stars -- until I got to the end, when its themes emerged more clearly: those of having the courage to create one’s own identity, to refuse to be defined by circumstances. In true Vendela Vida fashion, the protagonist Clarissa travels to exotic locations seeking identity and a home. Clarissa, on an actual journey to the northern edges of Scandinavia, seeks knowledge about who and where her parents were and are. Her mother vanished when she was 14; the man she thought was her father, she finds out upon his death, was not. The emotional journey, though, is the better part, and what she learns about her parents leads to new compassion and new understandings about herself and how she wants to live. And I learned that I never, ever want to stay in an ice hotel.

[Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just closed the back cover and find myself breathing hard from the emotional weight of it. It is almost painful to read a story told from such a singular point of view. The mind wants to wander to how those whose lives she trampled in and out of must feel.

(And, when you read it, you'll wonder if I'm talking about the mother or the daughter. Really, I suppose, it's both.)

This book is written simply. In quick, conversational bursts. But carries with it some of the darkest secrets of the heart. And, the hardest lessons of empathy and forgiveness.

[Ayelet Waldman]

I loved this book. She writes like Joan Didion.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

The emotions I felt while reading this book leave me unsettled and longing for a way to relieve the feelings that simply cannot be resolved. She does not waste words on analyzing how people feel and much of what has to be felt by the characters goes completely unstated. The author describes such HUGELY emotional moments so sparsely that it leaves my heart aching. And this unsettledness is what I imagine the main characters to have felt as they attempt to escape their realities.

[Regina Andreassen · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mediocre book, or below mediocre with potential to be adequate. Besides, exposing some aspects of the Sami people the book offers very little to the reader. The story is contrived, the writing feels rushed, and the protagonist is unlikeable by the end of the book I simply did not care about her and her future. I don't need to like a protagonist to enjoy a book but at least I need a character that I can understand or find slightly interesting. If a character is written to emotionally touch the reader but instead the character comes across as vicious, then the author is doing a poor job. I cnnot empathise with Clarissa's struggles. Clarissa is judgemental, prejudiced, impolite, infantile, irresponsable, patronising, and she can be ruthless. I don't see any positive traits in her, except perhaps certain degree of tenacity but that would be normal in her case and she gives up easily.

There are some situations than to me seem to be there for shock value. For example, Clarissa kills a cat on purpose, a cat whom her mother loved. Clarissa kills the poor animal simply because to her, Taft- the cat- was a nuisance; and guess what? Clarissa feels no remorse about it at all! In fact years later she thinks of it almost as it was somehow intrepid and courageous of her to have killed Taft and to get away with it and then she uses this to provoke a reaction in someone... I shall not say more to avoid spoilers. Why was animal abuse in this story? How was it relevant? I can justify and accept animal abuse in a book when it is crucial, and helpz the narrative but in this case it is not.

Oh, by the end of the book there are some obvious loose endings. As a whole, the story is shallow and feels heavily manufactured, the characters are not well crafted, and the prose is bland which not even some of her occasional beautiful and brief descriptions can enhance. If you expect lyricism and sharpness you will not find it in this book.


Final comment: I don't really recommend this book, I have done my best to write a concise and fair critique, but I must be loyal to myself and I will not settle. If I had the chance to rate as accurately as possible I would give it a 2.35 stars...the closer I can do here is 2 so there goes my rating.
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[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

With chapters extending to two pages at the most and at barely two hundred pages, Let The Northern... pretty much dispenses with descriptive passages. This is especially unusual considering that its setting is Lapland, a locale that, presumably, few of its readers have visited. This is because we are firmly in the protagonist's mind. This is the real location. And our hero is so troubled and unaware of her surroundings that she barely avoids freezing to death. In her search for her biological father, Clarissa morphs into a mumbling derelict. She may be in Lapland but she would no doubt be a foreigner in her hometown as well.

The familiar topic (20 something heroine searches for her biological father) may make you feel you know what's in store. But this is not a book about finding yourself. Life lessons are few and misguided. On the contrary, and keeping with the title, it's actually about losing yourself. Reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping," this is a haunting tale about a damaged woman who, through hereditary and past trauma, can no longer be herself. Clarissa's journey of self discovery ultimately locks every door behind her, leaving nowhere left to go but forward.

[Eridani · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an OK book, with an OK storyline, but the main character drove me crazy. She was a 28 year old woman acting like a snotty teenager who discovers a secret about herself and then takes off to another country without bothering to tell her fiance', her mentally challenged brother's keepers or even her best friend where she's going. Apparently she never paid attention in school when you're told to ALWAYS tell someone where you're going.
Things don't work out as she expected- so not going into all the pointless details about that, but essentially she finds out that her mother was one big B***h that didnt care about either of her children.
The book had good potential, but fell short in my opinion and the ending just sucked... She never goes home, forgets about her poor brother with Down's Syndrome (why not, everyone else has) and never bothers to tell her fiance' about her big discovery? The next thing you know, she's taken a job in Hong Kong, married some embassy dude and they're raising her child together... Ya know, that brother was probably better off with his care-takers, considering Clarissa turned out so much like her own mother.
Just my opinion... I'm sure someone liked it more than I did...

[Michael Livingston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and spare, there are moments of real beauty in this novel about figuring out who you are when the things you thought you knew about yourself turn out to be lies. Still, there was something distancing about the characters which made it hard to really get swept along.

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another lovely read by one of my new favourite authors. A young woman travels to Lapland where she believes she will finally meet her real father only to discover a terrible secret. The writing is excellent and the story heartbreakingly beautiful.