The Lovers by Vendela Vida

 

Formats:  Hardcover		Publishers: Harper Collins Canada

I am always excited to hear Vendela Vida has a new book out.  Her stories are usually set in exciting locales and her characters are strong women determined to navigate life on their own after a tragedy befalls them. In  "And Now You Can Go", partly set in the Phillipines, a young woman talks a suicidal gunman out of killing them both;  in Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name,  set in Lapland, the crime is rape; and in "The Lovers" it is an accident that drives our 53-year old protagonist (Yvonne) to return to Datcha, a coastal village in Istanbul.  Spot the common link?  Rage and violence and then a trip to a foreign land in search of oneself. Apparently, this is deliberate and Vida is very conscious of creating a trilogy of sorts with these three titles.  Now, back to the story:

After Yvonne loses Peter, her husband and love of her life, to a "hit and run", she decides (after a period of mourning) to return to Datcha, a coastal village in Istanbul, which is where they had their honeymoon twenty-eight years ago.  She was scheduled to stay there for a week until the cruise ship that her son and his wife were sailing on, picked her up from Datcha. Her reasons for returning to Datcha are clear: she wants to know if the grief she feels at Peter's death can be obliterated by the good memories of their honeymoon...
Like with most places, time hadn't been real kind to Datcha and everything she saw, the beach, the houses, the roads, just seemed shabbier and less vibrant..."the beach was filthy. Small plastic bags, gelatinous in the sun, had been deposited by the tide on the strand."  

and

“Half the restaurants had been shut down. The remaining ones displayed sick-looking fish on beds of crushed gray ice. With soiled rags, waiters shooed away mangy cats trolling for food. A sprinkling of tourists speaking German sat outside the cafes, their skin sunburned to a peculiar shade of orange.”

Still, she stays on in a nice house that she rented from Turkish businessman Ali Celik and soon became friends with his wife Ozlem.  Ozlem and Ali were in the process of getting a divorce and Yvonne soon became Ozlem's sounding board for all the wretchedness that was going on in her marriage.  But it was a symbiotic relationship because in Ozlem Yvonne found someone who could show her the ropes and a non-judgmental curiosity about her life with Peter.

Along with Ozlem and Ali, other people that pass through Yvonne's life as she holidays in Turkey is a 10-year old boy who reminds her of her son Matt when he was small.  Ahmet's grandmother is the owner of of one of the resorts in Knidos but because she is too busy for the boy, Ahmet spends all day on the beach collecting shells from the Aegean Sea....the lonely figure he cuts on the beach is what endears him to Yvonne and soon she is befriending him much to the dislike of some of the locals, until tragedy strikes and she is forced to face their hatred head on.

There is undeniably a very melancholic air to the book with a few menacing details, but one that is nonetheless uplifting.  I will admit to taking a while to get into the book - I found the protagonist a little too gloomy with a penchant for navel gazing and/or looking backward - but once I was over that hump, I was able rediscover the Vendela Vida magic. Because it's more of a novella and has very interesting descriptions of Turkey, I will even recommend this as a great summer read!

What you take away from Vendela Vida's "The Lovers" will depend on what stage of life you're at.  A young person reading this is likely to have a very different view of the book than a middle-aged woman. Regardless of the age, however, I feel quite certain that every reader will enjoy the book and the way it explores memories.  The title might be a little misleading though, because although there are many "lovers" in the book, including an owl pining for its mate, you realize that Yvonne herself seems lost and unanchored and probably, saddest of all, she concludes that her marriage it not what she thought it was.

I am very grateful to Harper Collins, Canada for making a copy of this book available for me to read.

Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida

# Hardcover: 240 pages

# Publisher: Ecco (January 2, 2007)

# Language: English

Vendela Vida's last book "And Now You Can Go", didn't have all that much to write home about, but the writing was so quirky and clever, the characters so unusual and unique that I made a mental to note to hunt down her next book just to treat myself to more Vendila Vida, and I am glad I did!!!

"Let The Northern Lights Erase your Name" borrows its title from a Sami poem, by Mary Ailonieda and it, together with the cover art, effectively captures both the setting as well as the theme of the novel. Most of the book takes place in Lapland, the place where Norway, Finland and Sweden come together aboove the Arctic circle and is the abode of the Sami or indigenous population of Northern Scandanavia. I was excited that Vida chose to set this book in Lapland, because this fabled home of Santa Claus and his reindeer, is an irresitable draw.

THis is a hard book to write a review for because, like with any mystery novel, giving even a little away might be too much..in a nut shell, Clarissa, the protagonist of the novel, was abandoned by her mother in a shopping mall when she was 14, in an excruciating painful way...the two were out Christmas shopping together and when suddenly her mother disappared, leaving a goodbye message with a store clerk (“She said to tell you she got tired of waiting”) leaving Clarissa and her brother who suffers from "Down's Syndrome" to be brought up by the father.

Upon her father's death, Clarissa accidently learns that he wasn't her real father , which takes her on a journey to Lapland in the hope of uncovering her identity, instead, she learns of several more secrets, deceptions and lies...

This book is filled with characters you are going to despise and yet, you are going to want to read more about them...the atmospheric descriptions of Lapland and the Sami people with their reindeer herd, their JOeks ( a personal song that sounds like a yodel) are beautiful and enlightening. I was particularly excited to be given a ringside view of the Ice Hotel...spending a couple of nights at the ice hotel has always been on my list of "must-experience" and after reading about it here I know it has to be done sooner than later! Just make sure you bundle up well and grab yourself a mug of hot chocolate before reading the book because her descriptions of the cold and snow are so vivid, you almost feel the cold artic air as you read.

While secrets and lies are the pervading themes of this book...the author also addresses issues of abandonment, one's quest for one's identity, mothers and daughters, reinventing oneself, communication, or rather the lack of it... this book is a multi-dimensional one and will present a lot of questions as you read, but the good news is that it will answer all of the questions it presents.

If you're looking for something quick and something a little different, give this book a try, you might be happy you did.