Vendela Vida’s novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name is a novel of betrayal and a search for identity. Vida is an editor of The Believer lit mag, and she is also Dave Eggers’ wife. I had previously read some essays of Vida’s, but I had never read any of her fiction. This, her most recent novel (of two), had received positive reviews. It seemed like a good place to start exploring Vida’s fiction.

Clarissa, the novel’s protagonist, is an angry woman. Her mother abandoned her family when she was fourteen years old, never to be heard from again. In addition to Clarissa, her mother left behind a mentally handicapped brother and her father. Clarissa spends the rest of her teenage years dreaming about where her mother might be and imagining why she left them. In a telling revelation, we learn that Clarissa semi-intentionally ran over the cat that was her mother’s favorite.

After her father’s funeral years later, Clarissa learns that the man she has always called “dad” is not her father at all. Worse, she finds out that her fiancee (and former neighbor) had known the secret for many years. Feeling betrayed by seemingly everyone that has ever mattered to her, Clarissa does a runner in search of her own truth.

The trail to Clarissa’s mother leads to some unlikely places. Ultimately, Clarissa finds herself in Helsinki heading to Lapland (with a stay in an ice hotel). The setting is cold, barren, and unforgiving. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never read a book that explores this part of the world before. It’s a fascinating and fitting backdrop for Clarissa’s story.

Clarissa’s voice has a clipped and bitter tone, as though she’s re-opening fresh wounds that still hurt, and she’s anxious to be done with it. You can read an excerpt of the book here to see what I mean. The novel begins with wound imagery right out of the gate (and some snappy writing):

It was three in the afternoon when my plane landed at the Helsinki airport, but outside my window, dusk was already settling in like a bruise. I retrieved my suitcase, its handle cold, and stumbled to the tourist information desk, where a woman with good teeth and bad English helped me find a hotel near the train station.

The novel becomes increasingly compelling as Clarissa finds out more about her past. Towards the end there were several nights where I continued to read well past my bed time. It has long been a personal shortcoming of mine (for reasons that are not clear) that female authors are under-represented in my reading. Vendela Vida is an author that brightly highlights what I’ve been missing. Plus, her name is awesome.