At five p.m. on December 16, my mother called me into her study. I waited until she said my name twice, so I didn’t appear too eager. There is something quietly heartbreaking in these words, spoken by the narrator of Vendela Vida’s lovely second novel, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. Some years before the opening action of the novel, Clarissa’s mother disappeared, and a number of the brief, impressionistic chapters are devoted to the mercurial woman whose absence has left its melancholic mark on Clarissa. In one scene, Clarissa’s mother asks her young daughter how she looks,...
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