<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  THE LOWDOWN  What would you do if you found out your father wasn&amp;#039;t really your father? And you couldn&amp;#039;t interrogate your mother about it because she disappeared 14 years earlier? Why not do as Vendela Vida&amp;#039;s 28-year-old heroine Clarissa Iverton did: seek out your roots in Finland&amp;#039;s icy and exotic Lapland and discover some chilling truths.  LUCY: (Executive Editor) ( I enjoyed the book, but I had a problem with the self- consciousness of the writing \u2014 like when she compares her fiance&amp;#039;s eyes to the color of the papaya seeds. I mean, I don&amp;#039;t know what color papaya seeds are. Am I supposed to run to the botanical dictionary?  LAUREN: Articles Editor) ( Right, why have all that cute clausey, clausey, clause clause language? But sometimes her metaphors really worked.  LUCY: Eh \u2014sometimes. When she said Henrik smelled like a hamster she used to own, I thought that was a perfectly good description of how a guy named Henrik could smell. But \u2014 LAUREN: Or &amp;quot;Everything around me felt familiar yet amiss, like the first time you ride in the backseat of your own car,&amp;quot; I liked that. I got that.  SARAH: (Editorial Assistant)  I was really impressed that there was a story. LUCY:  Yeah, I found the idea of having to find out what the deal is with your mother who abandoned you extremely compelling and moving. I mean, it&amp;#039;s just basic stuff, and if it sends you to the ends of the earth, I believe it absolutely could.  YAEL: (Associate Editor)  But the main character just pissed me off! I mean, if it were me, I would definitely want to find my mother. But I&amp;#039;d like to think I wouldn&amp;#039;t completely overlook the people who were there for me. So what if her dad wasn&amp;#039;t her biological father? He treated her like his own. SARAH:  The thing that&amp;#039;s going to make me throw up is when people say that Lapland (or what have you) is a character in this book.  YAEL:  \u2026And all that ice is a stand in for the icy mother\u2026  SARAH:  I mean, her mother was pretty freakin&amp;#039; awful. When she says, &amp;quot;You poor thing, you always tried so hard to get a reaction from me.&amp;quot; What the \u2014  LUCY: See, I didn&amp;#039;t feel like her mother was being malicious. I just felt like she was who she was. It&amp;#039;s probably just something she was looking at with a degree of disconnection because she was never really in this mother-daughter relationship, in the way one hopes mothers typically are. It was like this quizzical &amp;quot;What do you want from me?&amp;quot;  YAEL:  Well, there was a brief moment when Clarissa overhears her mother crying late at night and goes to her. And her mom says &amp;quot;You have no idea what I&amp;#039;ve been through.&amp;quot;  LUCY: You know what I thought was so weird \u2014 at the end she says &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t forgive her, but I could understand what had possessed her to do what she had done\u2026You could not erase a rape \u2013 you would always be either a victim or survivor.&amp;quot; What&amp;#039;s with that? After all this incredible ellipticalness, it&amp;#039;s suddenly like a pamphlet from a crisis center.  YAEL:  Right, like &amp;quot;Ohhh, okay, I get why you left now.&amp;quot; But the whole end was rushed and unfinished. All of a sudden, she goes off to Hong Kong to start a new life? Live happily ever after, just like that?  LAUREN: And she&amp;#039;s pregnant with her ex-fiancee&amp;#039;s baby! YAEL:  Right! Now her own daughter is never going to know her biological father either?! Vida writes in the Afterword that she was &amp;quot;curious about the kind of person who would see their past as unconnected to their present.&amp;quot; But her kid is totally connected to her past! God! Talk about baggage\u2026 LAUREN: Yeah, I don&amp;#039;t know anybody who could just start fresh and meet someone new like she does and not fill him in on where&amp;#039;s she been.  LUCY: \u2026because so many of us have that defining urge to be known \u2014 even the bad stuff. I mean, you are who you are. LAUREN: It&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;You know, I used to be wild.&amp;quot;  LUCY: Right. Or, &amp;quot;I killed a guy once.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a1199/book-club-0308/>