About book Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name (2007)
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
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!
Do You like book Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name (2007)?
Pia, it seems like I am running into your "prowl" theme all the time lately (without searching, as you are). The last two books I have read have the mother abandoning daughter scenario largely coloring the story so check out Sweetwater Creek by Anne Siddons and The Apothecary's Daughter if you haven't already read them. I enjoyed both.
—Pia
I picked this up after reading an interview with Dave Eggers in Creative Nonfiction. I have a bit of a shameful crush on Eggers (for some reason I feel as though this is a bad thing, but I really do think he's great) and so when I found out that his wife was a writer, I felt like I should see what kind of writer she was, just out of curiosity (not because I'm a big ole stalker).At first, I was a bit put off by the dialogue in the book, which seemed a bit stilted and unnatural, a little overly mannered. I kept reading anyway, because I liked the atmosphere of the book, which, in keeping with its Finnish setting, was rather claustrophobic and cold. I kept with it all the way to the end, and then when I closed the book, I felt like I had been emotionally run over, but in a really good way.I have my criticisms of the book (like the aforementioned dialogue problems and the way she handled the ending), but I am willing to overlook them because it provoked such a strong emotional response in me. I've read too many books that left me feeling nothing by the end that when I do come across one that instills me with such a deep sense of sadness, I can't help but love it.
—Caitlin Constantine
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.
—Leigh
