Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
{{Short description|2007 novel by Vendela Vida}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox book
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| name = Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
| image = Let_the_Northern_Lights_Erase_Your_Name_front_cover.jpg
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| caption = First edition
| author = Vendela Vida
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| genre = Novel
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| published = 2 January 2007
| publisher = Ecco Press
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Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name is a novel written by Vendela Vida. The book was first published on 2 January 2007 by Ecco Press. This was Vida's second published novel.{{cite news|title=Review Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/04/fiction.features4|accessdate=24 April 2015|work=The Guardian}}{{cite news|title=Are You My Mother?|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/books/review/Bell.t.html?_r=0|accessdate=24 April 2015|work=The New York Times| date=31 December 2006 | last1=Bell | first1=Madison Smartt }}{{cite web|title=Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name – Book Review|url=http://www.caribousmom.com/2008/10/02/let-the-northern-lights-erase-your-name-book-review/|publisher=Caribousmom|accessdate=24 April 2015}}{{cite news|title=Book review|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/vendela-vida/let-the-northern-lights-erase-your-name/|accessdate=24 April 2015|publisher=Kirkus}}
Plot
Clarissa Iverton, a New Yorker is the female protagonist of the novel. Her mother disappeared when she was 14 years old, and when she became 28 years old, her father died. After the death of her father she realized that person was not her real father. Knowing this Clarissa becomes desperate to meet her real parents. She understands to unveil this secret she has travel to Finland. She abandons her fiancé and starts journey to Helsinki, Finland
Reviews
The novel was largely appreciated by reviewers and critics for its emotional complexity and dark humour. In the March/April 2007 issue of Bookmarks, the book was scored a three and a half out of five stars. The magazine's critical summary reads: "The novel’s ending will satisfy most readers, although two reviewers found it predictable".{{Cite web |title=Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name By Vendela Vida|url=http://www.bookmarksmagazine.com/book-review/let-northern-lights-erase-your-name/vendela-vida|access-date=14 January 2023 |website=Bookmarks|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150908123408/http://www.bookmarksmagazine.com/book-review/let-northern-lights-erase-your-name/vendela-vida|archive-date=8 Sep 2015}}
The Guardian wrote—
The story is loaded with creepy quaintness. . . Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name tries to be many things - a thriller, a meditation on identity and language, a family romance gone wrong, a Lapland travelogue. Olivia emerges rather unexpectedly from the middle of it all, a comic invention of real energy and scope.
The New York Times found—
Vida sustains a bleakly comic aspect of this excruciatingly sad story, as Clarissa blunders around the Arctic Rim, accosting strangers in the manner of that hapless lost chick in P. D. Eastman’s children’s classic, “Are You My Mother?”... This emotional core makes the book much more than an Edward Gorey comic strip. Take away the exotic setting and circumstance and you have a relentlessly believable story of a child’s futile struggle to, well, “be loved.”
References
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External links
- [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64482.Let_the_Northern_Lights_Erase_Your_Name Book details at Goodreads]
Category:Novels set in Helsinki
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