…[Vida's] fourth and finest book [is] a taut, suspenseful story that ticks along with marvelous efficiency, like a little bomb…With its echoes of Hitchcock and Highsmith, this novel is full of darting pleasures…[The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty ] unspools swiftly; only later do we realize what an elaborate web Ms. Vida has spun, full of intricate patterns of doubling and coincidence. Every plot point, every object seems to return…everything assumes significance. It's the economy of imagery one finds in dreams.
The New York Times - Parul Sehgal
04/27/2015
Vendela Vida has written a truly original novel, a work of art that shines with Buñuelian play and cruelty. The situation is discomfiting and addictive. You will be driven to read this novel compulsively, and then you will have the same strange sly smile that I do, now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[The main character’s] transformation from victim into liberated shadow is as exhilarating and unsettling as Vida’s novel itself-a literary tour de force in the skin of a thriller.
[Diver’s Clothes] begins in a realist mode but sheds this skin as it goes, becoming in its second half a gently postmodern, surrealist philosophical novel on the protean nature of personal identity. That it manages to do this gracefully and in the span of 212 pages is remarkable.
A riveting read about the ups, downs, and self-discovery of travel.
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.
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.
Vida gives the icy landscape and eerie, forbidding beauty and her writing has . . . great emotional acuity.
Seductive, reflective, unsettling. All our lives are journeys...[and] hopefully, we shed some of our ignorance along the way. Vida writes-so beautifully!- about this process.
Vida is a subtle writer whose voice is spare and authoritative, at times sounding like a less gothic Paul Bowles, and her third novel is further evidence that she can fashion characters as unpredictable as they are endearing .
New York Times Book Review
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.)
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.
01/01/2015
2015-03-03
[Vendela Vida’s] finest book...With its echoes of Hitchcock and Highsmith, this novel is full of darting pleasures.” — New York Times
“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
“Vendela Vida has written a truly original novel, a work of art that shines with Buñuelian play and cruelty. The situation is discomfiting and addictive. You will be driven to read this novel compulsively, and then you will have the same strange sly smile that I do, now.” — Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers
“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
“Smart, thoroughly engrossing, funny, and even a bit disturbing. … Part mystery/thriller and part absurdist/postmodern novel with a feminist slant, it is simultaneously funny and serious.” — New York Journal of Books
“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
“Unequivocally a thriller, but more movingly, a meditation on identity.” — Vanity Fair
“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
“A riveting read about the ups, downs, and self-discovery of travel.” — Los Angeles Times
“This new volume is compelling in its underlying mystery and its call for readers to explore their individual pasts and the opportunities they can take in pursuit of a fulfilling future. It’s never too late, the novel suggests, to begin anew. Vida’s prose is spare and suspenseful, moving the reader quickly toward the denouement. It’s a novel ripe for the summer season-a book you can read on your porch or at the beach, leaving your old self, like the diver’s clothes, behind.” — Seattle Times
“Tremendously fulfilling.” — Maclean's
“Vida’s prose is spare and suspenseful, moving the reader quickly toward the denouement. It’s a novel ripe for the summer season-a book you can read on your porch or at the beach, leaving your old self, like the diver’s clothes, behind.” — Electric Literature
“[Diver’s Clothes] begins in a realist mode but sheds this skin as it goes, becoming in its second half a gently postmodern, surrealist philosophical novel on the protean nature of personal identity. That it manages to do this gracefully and in the span of 212 pages is remarkable.” — BookForum
“[The main character’s] transformation from victim into liberated shadow is as exhilarating and unsettling as Vida’s novel itself-a literary tour de force in the skin of a thriller.” — O, the Oprah Magazine
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.
Unequivocally a thriller, but more movingly, a meditation on identity.
Smart, thoroughly engrossing, funny, and even a bit disturbing. … Part mystery/thriller and part absurdist/postmodern novel with a feminist slant, it is simultaneously funny and serious.
New York Journal of Books
[Vendela Vida’s] finest book...With its echoes of Hitchcock and Highsmith, this novel is full of darting pleasures.
A riveting read about the ups, downs, and self-discovery of travel.
This new volume is compelling in its underlying mystery and its call for readers to explore their individual pasts and the opportunities they can take in pursuit of a fulfilling future. It’s never too late, the novel suggests, to begin anew. Vida’s prose is spare and suspenseful, moving the reader quickly toward the denouement. It’s a novel ripe for the summer season-a book you can read on your porch or at the beach, leaving your old self, like the diver’s clothes, behind.
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.
Tremendously fulfilling.
Vida’s prose is spare and suspenseful, moving the reader quickly toward the denouement. It’s a novel ripe for the summer season-a book you can read on your porch or at the beach, leaving your old self, like the diver’s clothes, behind.
The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty is both a travel cautionary tale and a fantasy about the infinite possibility that travel offers.
[The main character’s] transformation from victim into liberated shadow is as exhilarating and unsettling as Vida’s novel itself-a literary tour de force in the skin of a thriller.
This arresting audiobook is written in the second person, which could be wearying but is beautifully handled here. An American woman in flight from her life lands in Casablanca. Or as the novel would have it—“you” land in Casablanca. “You” are immediately robbed of your passport and wallet, and the police seem to be in some way complicit; “you” will not get your possessions or identity back. Now what? You the reader are willy-nilly up to your neck in this uncomfortable mess. Xe Sands gives a fine, if laconic, narration of the text, as if seeking to add to “your” traumatized numbness. One distraction: She repeatedly reads “chaise longue” (French for long chair) as chaise “lounge,” although “you” are a French speaker. B.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
