The Lovers

By: Vendela Vida

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

“Vendela Vida has written a riveting and suspenseful novel about an American woman’s voyage to self-discovery.”
—Joyce Carol Oates

“Stunning. A masterful meditation on grief and love. The Lovers is a sensational novel from one of our finest writers at the height of her craft.”
—Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries

In 2007, Vendela Vida’s novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. With her new novel, The Lovers, former Kate Chopin Writing Award winner Vida tells a powerful and beautiful tale of a widow returning alone to the site of her honeymoon in Turkey, and her subsequent journeys through her past and her present.

The Lovers by vendela Vida

If you could sum up The Lovers in three words, what would they be?

Interesting premise, well-written, story meanders a bit with an unsatisfying ending.

Any additional comments?

I was looking forward to listening to this story based on the largely positive reviews that I had read. The story was quite well-written but it meandered a bit and we don't get to know the main character as well as we could. The ending was upbeat, but didn't fit well with the story. The book did best in describing the atmosphere of what Turkey is like and how it feels to be a woman on her own in this country.

A quiet novel that lingers

What can we learn from a widow who, in late middle age, decides to vacation where she had her honeymoon many years before? Something about how our perceptions shape our beliefs and how we carry past family problems deep within ourselves, using them as a filter against current realities.

The pace is easy and gentle, kind to the protagonist, but the novel pulls no punches when it's time to make a point. It's old-fashioned in a way, I suppose, resembling the way people "used to" write novels. I'm all for literary invention, but sometimes I just want to read a story that starts at the beginning and ends at the end, and this is a good one.

Seemingly pointless, but worth every second

I've been wanting to read something by Vindela Vida for awhile now, after seeing the movie, Away We Go, that she co-wrote with her husband, Dave Eggars. I had no expectations going into this book. I decided to let it take me on whatever journey it wanted to.

It was never boring, but I found the seemingly pointless details very tedious. And I absolutely hated the narrator. She over-exagerated every sentence as if she were reading an action packed thriller, or she were about to reveal a sinister plot in a gripping who-done-it. She redeemed herself, however, by doing a great job with the accents. She even did a New Zealand accent with a fair bit of accuracy.

In the end, those things that bothered me didn't matter so much. Once you find out the whole point of the journey and all the little details, the tedium proves to be all worth it. It isn't a gripping tale, or a breathtaking masterpiece. Rather, it is a quiet meandering story that results in self-awareness and acceptance.