Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name has been on my to-read list for quite some time now. I’m not sure what took me so long to get to it, or what source recommended the novel in the first place. I think part of the reason it stuck with me was the lure of the title – I’ve always been drawn to the aurora borealis and the novel’s title, taken from a poem by Marry Ailoniedia Somby, conjured enticing images of the majestic natural phenomenon that I couldn’t resist. Once I finally delved in this book, I devoted an entire night to reading it, finishing the novel in the space of a few hours. Vida’s story drew me in with ease and effortlessly compelled me to reach the last page in a single sitting.

The northern lights play a large supporting role in this story primarily located in the Arctic Circle. Upon her father’s death, Clarissa Iverton discovers that the man she always called Dad was not, in fact, her biological father. Though her mother left the family when Clarissa was just fourteen years old, the man she believed was her father, Richard, raised her to adulthood as any true parent would have. When she reveals the truth about Richard to her fiance Pankaj, Clarissa grows even more bewildered to learn that Pankaj was privy to, and withheld, this secret for years. Fueled by a sense of betrayal and confusion, Clarissa journeys to Helsinki where the father listed on her birth certificate lives.

On her frigid northern quest, Clarissa comes to terms with the reality that Richard is dead, that her mother deserted the family, that she never knew her real father. Through cities that hold untold secrets of her mother’s past, the parallels between mother and daughter become increasingly apparent. Though she set out to uncover the identity of her father, during the course of her travels Clarissa learns more about her mother than anyone else. And with this newfound knowledge, a semblance of understanding takes hold. Befriending members of the Sami community, lying beneath the magnificent northern lights, living out days entirely devoid of sunlight, spending a night in the famed Ice Hotel, the rather vague personal intentions with which Clarissa originally sets out take more rigid form as she is welcomed to the Arctic Circle and narrows in on her origins.

Amidst an arresting frozen backdrop, Vida instills a refreshing sense of adventure into the somewhat tired story of uncovering tightly bound family secrets. Though this novel deals with some of the most painful discoveries that a daughter could possibly make, it is appropriately touched with levity and as miraculous and stunning as the northern lights from which it takes its name.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

It seems more like a filler story. But it’s an Atwood filler story so it has punch and bite.

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.

 

One interesting fact: The Sami believe that the Northern Lights look like fires and that they are their ancestors. I thought that was beautiful.

 

 

Set in Lapland and written in a beautifully still style, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, is an intriguing and easy read. To tell much about the story would be to give it away but it is very good at what it sets out to do. 

 

It is about rape and what it does to women. Two women in different situations whose lives are forever changed and who just happen to be mother and daughter.  One finds out she is a daughter of rape and that the mother who deserted her as a child wants nothing to do with her and the other (the mother) is unable to be free and open with anyone and hides away living her life near the arctic circle in a frozen land.

(spoiler show)