The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida is the third novel I have read by this author, following The Lovers which I read fifteen years ago. Yet unlike The Lovers, where minimalistic writing ruled the page, Vida switched gears completely, creating a novel wholly unlike the previous two. If minimalism can be applied to The Diver’s Clothes, it is in that hardly any of the characters are named. Instead. Vida uses the verbose phrasing each and every time in referring to characters as the “pale practical secretary” and the “famous American actress”, while the protagonist herself is always referred to in the second person. Thus the narrator is telling the story about herself always with you pronouns. Plenty of occasions exist where the narrator is asked directly for her name, yet she always hedges the question. She uses a pseudonym (Sabine Alyse, Megan Willis, Reeves Conway, Jane and Aretha) yet never her own name.
I agree with the quotation printed above the title on the front cover. I was driven to read this book and could not put it down, racing through it in three days. There were no chapters within its 213 pages, yet that didn’t matter. I couldn’t wait to return to the book to find out where the action led next.
There are legitimate reasons the narrator is asked to reveal her identity. When her backpack is stolen as she checks in to a hotel in Casablanca, she goes to the consulate to sort out what to do next, yet the agent is rudely dismissive. Shady circumstances by an incompetent police force return what is not her backpack and wallet to her yet she finds herself now burdened with someone else’s identity. The web gets even more tangled, when she finds the credit cards inside the backpack had not been cancelled, and she really needs to get out there and buy a few things. She uses the cards fraudulently, then fears going back to the police or consulate ever again.
A movie is being filmed in Casablanca and the stand-in for the star abruptly walks off the set. Conveniently, our protagonist is a dead-ringer for the “famous American actress” and is hired on the spot. This gives our eternally-pseudonymed main character the ways and means to live in Casablanca for the time being as she tries to sort her life out. At least the movie company can provide her with a hotel, food and a wardrobe, in addition to star company and the perks that come with moviemaking.
Late in the novel our movie star stand-in reveals that she served as a surrogate for her sister, who could not carry a child. That led to an affair between the protagonist’s own husband and sister. We never meet them and the drama does not affect the action in Morocco so I am not spoiling the story for anyone, but we do get to see how the protagonist’s mind works and why she chose to use the name Reeves Conway, because that is the name given to the child she carried.
Vida made the fast-paced action and clownish circumstances seem believable and not like a cartoon adventure. I never rolled my eyes thinking “Yeah, right”. I could follow her desperately through the souks, see her helplessly given the runaround by hotel security, and even serving as the stand-in for the movie star’s own date. I liked the description of the date’s tie:
“You can see him relaxing and he loosens his tie. His tie is expensive-looking and, like all expensive ties, has a stupid pattern–this one has little frogs. You wish he would take it off.”
The action was at times hilarious, yet always plausible. No wonder I didn’t want to put this book down.