
The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida
Vendela Vida's new novel begins in a realist mode but sheds this skin as it goes, becoming in its second half a gently postmodern, surrealist philosophical meditation on the protean nature of personal identity. Here, a woman, once a competitive driver, leaves her old life behind in Florida and flees to Morocco, where she proceeds to reinvent herself: She is called many names, none of them her own.
Such a lithe, unassuming novel, Vendela Vida’s latest! In this study of fragility and resilience, lives and identities are revealed to be as precarious as houses of cards. The plot recollects that of Vida’s previous book, The Lovers, in that it, too, presents an American heroine looking for solace in the East in the aftermath of a crushing personal disaster. But The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty is a much subtler and more agile creature. It 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