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Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

by Vendela Vida
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Award Excerpt

ISBN13: 9780060828387
ISBN10: 0060828382
Condition: Standard


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Awards

The Rooster 2008 Morning News Tournament of Books Nominee

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

On the day of her father's funeral, twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa Iverton discovers that he wasn't her biological father after all. Her mother disappeared fourteen years earlier, and now Clarissa is alone and adrift. The one person she feels she can trust, her fiancé, Pankaj, has just revealed a terrible and life-changing secret to her. In the cycle of a day, all the truths in Clarissa's world become myths and rumors, and she is catapulted out of the life she knew.

She finds her birth certificate, which leads her from New York to Helsinki, and then north of the Arctic Circle, to mystical Lapland, where she believes she'll meet her real father. There, under the northern lights of a sunless winter, Clarissa comes to know the Sami, the indigenous population, and seeks out a local priest, the one man who may hold the key to her origins. Along her travels she meets an elderly Sami healer named Anna Kristine, who has her own secrets, and a handsome young reindeer herder named Henrik, who accompanies Clarissa to a hotel made of ice. There she is confronted with the truth about her mother's past and finally must make a decision about how — and where — to live the rest of her life.

Joan Didion said of Vendela Vida's last book: "And Now You Can Go is so fast, so mesmerizing to read, and so accomplished that it's hard to think of it as a first novel, which it is. Vendela Vida has promise to spare." With Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, Vida more than lives up to that promise as she gives us a remarkable protagonist who is both fierce and funny, and an unforgettable literary thriller that questions whether we can ever truly know where we've come from — and if it is possible to escape our pasts.

Review

"[A] dark whimsy suffuses the whole book and accounts for much of its peculiarly biting charm. You've seen it before, in movies like Little Miss Sunshine or The Royal Tenenbaums and in books like — well, maybe there aren't any other books that walk this very fine line between high-camp comedy and the lyrical seriousness that Vida's title portends." New York Times

Review

"Vida gives the icy landscape an eerie, forbidding beauty, and her writing has moments of great emotional acuity." New Yorker

Review

"Novels about unhappy young people who seek to escape their dysfunctional families and find a new identity are almost a genre to themselves, but the vivid scenes of Lapland, with its reindeer, northern lights, and Ice Hotel, give this novel a unique twist." Library Journal

Review

"A luminescent and evocative tale of grief, free of the standard cliches." Kirkus Reviews

Synopsis

On the day of her father's funeral, twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa Iverton discovers that he wasn't her biological father after all. Her mother disappeared fourteen years earlier, and her fiancé has just revealed a life-changing secret to her. Alone and adrift, Clarissa travels to mystical Lapland, where she believes she'll meet her real father. There, at a hotel made of ice, Clarissa is confronted with the truth about her mother's his­tory, and must make a decision about how — and where — to live the rest of her life.

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 coeditor 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 center for youth.

5 3

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 5 (3 comments)

`
Cyndi Haupt , September 01, 2011 (view all comments by Cyndi Haupt)
What does it mean to be a person? Can we leave it all behind and reinvent ourselves? Would a mother act like that? These are some of the questions you'll be left with after reading this slim book. It's perfect for a book group! The setting also makes it perfect for a hot summer day!

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Catherine Barrett , January 16, 2010 (view all comments by Catherine Barrett)
The beautiful title of this book drew me in, and I was mesmerized by the setting and language of the story. A very sensory experience of being amid the snowy silence, observing the main character as she searches for family.

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`
Barisaxydame , March 31, 2008 (view all comments by Barisaxydame)
This one of the best books i have read. Vida's writing style is so beaulful and compeling. I pick up this book and didn't stop reading till i finished the last line and after i had finnished it i recomened it to my family and friends. This book has made me want to read more of Vida's writings. it is the story of a young woman going on a quest to discover more about her mother and her past in the icy norther lapland regiond of Finland, and not to sound too cleshe, she descovers herself and her future.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780060828387
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
01/02/2008
Publisher:
HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS
Series info:
P.S.
Pages:
256
Height:
.65IN
Width:
5.36IN
Thickness:
.50
Series:
P.S.
Number of Units:
1
Illustration:
Yes
Copyright Year:
2008
UPC Code:
2800060828389
Author:
Vendela Vida
Subject:
Identity (psychology)
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
Domestic fiction
Subject:
Illegitimate children
Subject:
Literature-A to Z

Ships free on qualified orders.
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List Price:$16.99
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