Rough Draft

Meredith Hiltbrand

“Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name”, a novel by Vendela Vida, details the journey of twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa Iverton, a young woman who finds out that her life is not all that it has been made out to be. Iverton, thrown into a world of disarray due to numerous unknown details about her life being revealed to her, throws away the life she always knew to pursue her curiosity for the one thing she is longing to find out: Where she truly came from, and who her parents really are.

After the death of the man who she knew as her father, Clarissa is left a package that entails certain details about her life that she never knew. For example, it turns out that the name of her father on her birth certificate is not her true father. According to the novel, Clarissa, who was left in a mall fourteen years earlier, has never met her true father. Through her entire life, she was under the impression that the man she grew up loving was lying to her the whole time. On top of that, her fiancé, Pankaj, has a secret of his own that coincides with Clarissa’s father. The whole time that Clarissa and Pankaj have been together, her fiancé has known that Clarissa had never met her true father, and the name on the birth certificate was not her natural father. After these traumatic turn of events, Clarissa decides to leave all that she has come to know, including her future husband, for the pursuit of her curiosity, and the man and woman who are her biological parents.

Once she has begun her journey, Clarissa travels first to the city of Helsinki near the Artic Circle, and then to Lapland where her supposed father lives. During her travels, she encounters a man who is her alleged father, that tells her that she was actually the offspring of an unfortunate series of events that her mother went through; Clarissa is told that she was the child of a woman who was raped. Because Olivia, her mother, was married to a minister when raped, she knew that if she stayed with him, she’d feel pitied constantly for her misfortune. This fear drove her to run from her husband. Once she ran, he tried to find her. He even flew to California, where Olivia’s sister lived, to see if she had gone there. Little did he know, her sister hadn’t even know Olivia was married, let alone pregnant.

Once encountering the shocking news of her alleged father, she went to look for her mother. Clarissa travels from one part of Lapland to another in hopes to find out more about her mother and her biological father. As she travels, she always reminisces about her and her mother when she was younger. Her curiosity seems to stem from her childhood memories.

After her long trip, she finally gets to her destination. While there, she becomes very ill and ends up staying with an older woman, Anna Kristine. Anna Kristine doesn’t speak any English, however they seem to communicate well without words. As Clarissa starts feeling better, she starts searching for any signs of her mother and father. While catching a ride back with a local, she is given an idea as to where her mother might be; working at a hotel.

Clarissa has such ambitions to find her mother and her father. This determination of hers makes this story so interesting. Even though the details and the outcome might be negative, which they ended up being, she still was happy with what she discovered not only about her parents, but herself too.

The End of the Book

The End of the Book

Personally, I did not like this book whatsoever. I definitely enjoyed the flow of it and how easy it was, but I was very, very disappointed in how it ended. I wanted her to realize the mistakes her mother made, which she did to some degree, but not make the same mistakes herself. I was very upset that she never went back to Pankaj. I felt that it was extremely selfish and irrational to never go back to him. I can understand her not wanting to be with him, but to never see him again when she is pregnant with his baby is completely wrong.

The twist in the book about Anna Kristine being her grandmother was very clever. I did not see that twist coming at all. I gained a lot of respect for Anna Kristine taking her in and helping her while she was ill. I questioned many, many times why a random old woman would do such a thing and the answer was revealed at the end.

It was a weird discovery that Clarissa was, in one way or another, related to Henrik even though it was obvious that there was a slight attraction between the two of them. It made their previous relation slightly awkward.

I didn’t think that Henrik was a very interesting person throughout the book. I thought that the whole reindeer herder was weird. He didn’t seem like he did anything that was meaningful. He seemed to herd his reindeer and go out to the bars. Regardless, he was a good friend to Clarissa throughout the whole book. He went with her to the Ice Hotel to meet/find her mother. He was very supportive of what she did.

In the end of the book, the only parts that I enjoyed were how she was able to live her life without torturing herself mentally and that she kept Richard as her father. I think that Richard, although not her biological father, was the only father she ever knew of. Without him, she wouldn’t be half the woman she is and I agreed with her decision to think of him as her father.

When she goes and visits her mother, Clarissa talks about how for the first time, she feels stronger than her mother. When reading that, I felt so happy for her. I can only imagine the strength it takes to spend so much money and time trying to find a mother that neglected and left her. I was disappointed at the time they had together, but I am somewhat impressed as to how Clarissa handled seeing her mother. I could understand why she was so angry and wanted to “shove” her mother when they were in the sauna area. The anger, frustration and sadness that had been building over the past decade and a half meant everything during that short period that she had with her mother. Clarissa seemed to want to talk to her and figure out so many things, but her mother wouldn’t stand for it. It was very shocking that even after fourteen years, her mother is still so selfish.

As far as my paper goes, I really have no idea what I will write about. I think I will develop an idea during our discussion during Tuesday’s class. I am seriously considering writing about the differences between the geographic distances versus the distance emotionally. The only problem with that, is I do not know how I could talk about that for four to six pages. I wouldn’t be able to. I need to come up with something that is interesting enough to talk a lot about. I need to come up with something that has a lot of evidence or possible points.