Diver's Clothes Lie Empty - Softcover

Vida, Vendela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062110942 ISBN 13: 9780062110947

Publisher: Ecco Press, 2016

Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name comes a taut, spellbinding literary thriller that probes the essence and malleability of identity

In Vendela Vida's taut and mesmerizing novel of ideas, a woman travels to Casablanca, Morocco, on mysterious business. While checking into her hotel, the woman is robbed of her wallet and passport--all of her money and identification. Stripped of her identity, she feels burdened by the crime yet strangely liberated by her sudden freedom to be anyone she wants to be.

Told with vibrant, lush detail and a wicked sense of humor, The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty is part literary mystery, part psychological thriller--an unforgettable novel that explores free will, power, and a woman's right to choose not her past, perhaps not her present, but certainly her future. This is Vendela Vida's most assured and ambitious novel yet.

"Part glamorous travelogue, part slow-burn mystery, this full-bodied tale of a runaway is at once formally inventive and heartbreakingly familiar. (It's also insanely funny.)"--Lena Dunham

"[Vida's] finest book....With its echoes of Hitchcock and Highsmith, this novel is full of darting pleasures."--New York Times

About this title

Review:

"A brilliant inquiry into the eternal mysteries of being... Told cinematically in one long, bewitching take, Vida's astutely insightful, keenly suspenseful, surreptitiously metaphysical novel demands to be read in a breath-held trance and then plunged into again."--Booklist (starred review)

"Vendela Vida's work is utterly compelling, surprising, economical, lush, beautifully written. Reading her inspires me, and reminds me of how powerful the novel can be - how addictive and vital - and of how rarely a writer as precise, artful, and passionate as her comes along."--George Saunders

"Like Bowles' despairing, existential "The Sheltering Sky," Vida's novel penetrates the psyche of an American traveler when confronted with an alien culture and landscape.... [A]n emotionally precise and absorbing meditation on how grief can divest us of our most fundamental sense of self."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Every woman writing literary thrillers gets compared to Patricia Highsmith once if she's lucky, but this is one of the few times it's felt to me like a hopeful comparison. After this, I'll read anything Vida writes."--Chicago Tribune

"You will tear through Vendela Vida's The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty, this wry, edgy, philosophical thriller, this love child of Albert Camus and Patricia Highsmith, this sly satire of Hollywood, this entertaining journey through the vast desert of identity and regret."--Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

"The novel packs a wallop, taking the themes of Camus and Kierkegaard and transplanting them into a story with the pace and intrigue of a page-turner... A speedy and suspenseful fish-out-of-water tale with a slyly philosophical bent."--Kirkus

"The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty is both a travel cautionary tale and a fantasy about the infinite possibility that travel offers."--NPR's Fresh Air

"Second-person narration is tough to pull off - but when a writer is as skilled as Vendela Vida, that experimental form results in a compelling interactive experience. What follows is a wild journey through Morocco, and an interesting take on the surreal experience of literally losing your identity."--Bustle

"A chilling tale about the gradual loss of identity-a novel of doubles, invisibility and lies, poised somewhere between a fever-dream and a suspenseful thriller . . .Vendela Vida perfectly captures what it feels like to be unreal, especially to oneself, and grasping at roles in order to survive."--Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?

"A tense, often nerve-wracking read, the anxiety heightened by the fact that it all comes to the reader as a direct address, in the second person. An artful, driving exploration of identity."--Portland Monthly

Book Description:

'Part glamorous travelogue, part slow-burn mystery, this full-bodied tale of a runaway is at once formally inventive and heartbreakingly familiar... (It's also insanely funny.)' Lena Dunham

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062110942
• ISBN 13: 9780062110947
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224