Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
A Novel
Vendela Vida
256 Pages
On-Sale Date: 02/01/2008
ISBN: 9780060828387
Trim Size: 5.300in x 8.000in x 0.850in
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.
“Vida gives the icy landscape and eerie, forbidding beauty and her writing has…great emotional acuity.” — The New Yorker
Reading this book reminded me…how rarely a writer as precise, artful, and passionate as Vendela Vida comes along. — George Saunders, author of IN PERSUASION NATION
Searing and beautiful…[Clarissa] is funny and fearless and absolutely unforgettable–just like this marvelous book. — Ann Packer, author of THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN’S PIER
“A taut, intricately layered page-turner that looks deeply and fearlessly into matters of profound human concern.” — Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE HOURS
“A haunted, moving, gorgeous novel. It glows from within like a building made of snow.” — Andrew Sean Greer, author of THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI
“A luminescent and evocative tale of grief, free of the standard clichés.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Intimate and sweeping, LET THE NORTHERN LIGHTS ERASE YOUR NAME dazzles like sun on snow.” — Sean Wilsey, author of OH THE GLORY OF IT ALL
“Taut, understated, and compelling” — Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“[A] stirring novel…as alive and fascinating as the brilliant atmospheric phenomenon of its title.” — Chicago Tribune
“[Vida’s] stripped-down, modern approach at its best applies a wash of freshness, even innocence to age-old questions.” — San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
