The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

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

April 27, 2015
A 34-year-old divorcée takes a 10-day vacation in Casablanca and, after her backpack is stolen, decides to shed her identity, a decision that releases her into the streets of Morocco and the depths of her own past. With her fourth novel, Vida (The Lovers) returns to familiar themes of identity and recovery, concerns that are well suited to stories about traveling abroad. Suspicious of her hotel and the police after the robbery, the woman takes advantage of a clerical error and commandeers another American’s identity: Sabine Alyse. With Sabine’s credit cards, she checks into the Hyatt, where a large film production has taken over the hotel, and soon makes friends with the famous actress starring in the movie. Written in the second person, the novel invites the reader to experience the protagonist’s separation firsthand. And as the woman’s situation becomes more complicated and her actions increasingly brazen, bits of her past are teased out. The result is an emotional and formally clever exploration of identity. Vida’s descriptive powers and restraint help to avoid the repetitive hammering of you that bogs down most second-person novels. Hard-boiled and inventive, the book takes a bold swing at mixing genres.