Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (2007)

Shortly after the death of her father, Clarissa Iverton, the doleful narrator of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, Vendela Vida's angular second novel, discovers that he was not, in fact, her father. Abruptly abandoned by her restless mother when she was 14, Clarissa abruptly abandons her doting fiancé travels to the far northern reaches of Scandinavia — where her mother had lived as a young woman — and begins searching for her lost birth parents. The urgency of Clarissa's quest never quite snaps into focus, but this novel's evanescent beauty is contained in prose as cool and crystalline as the ice hotel where she spends a night.