Northern Lights 2

When the novel first begins, the reader feels a great deal of remorse for Clarissa. She goes through her fathers funeral, only to be told by her fiance that it wasn't her biological father. Her fiance, Panjak, is really the only person in the world that she can trust. Clarissa has a little brother, but unfortunately he has down syndrome. It struck me as absurd when Clarissa said that she envied her brother because he probably didn't know what was really going on with the fathers funeral and his surroundings. Clarissa leaves her one true love to search for her biological father. After finding her birth certificate, she is compelled to travel from New York to above the Arctic circle. You really get to feel this character unraveling, as she sleeps with a man and leaves him the next morning. It's understandable that she does this, because I believe that she was so confused on what love actually meant, since her life seemed to be empty of it for the most part. In need to feel important, she threw herself at a man, only to leave him behind like she had been left by her family.
Throughout a long journey, Clarissa finally is able to meet her mother. One would think that when your mom has abandoned you for 19 years, and never told you the truth about your father, it would be hard, if not impossible, to gather up the courage to go see her. The comical aspect to this book, is that once Clarissa ends up meeting her mom, she turns out to be a lot like herself. The entire book Clarissa is giving people short one sentence answers, and we find out that she obtained this attribute from her mother. It's hard to read that when a daughter has traveled all around the world and left the one person she actually cares about, she is greeted with, "You have always tried to get a reaction out of me."
It is true that every daughter has a mother, and I believe that Clarissa is legitimately scared about the mother she would turn out to be based on her own. This could be a reason why she ends up blowing off the life she had back in New York, and staying over seas. Theres a possibility that she just couldn't face the thought of doing to a little girl what she had done to her. It's also ironic because Clarissa's life has revolved around the fact that she had loved ones leave her, and now she is doing the same thing to her fiance.
The mother in this movie reminds me a lot of the mother from the movie Evelyn. The mother, Charlotte Doyle, just leaves her husband and three kids behind one day. with no real notice, just like Clarissa's mom. Charlotte was also very closed off from the family before she even left, and would not make much of an effort to care for the family. Even tho one can't help but feel sorrow for this girl, you still understand, and almost forgive her for being the way she is once you get to understand her mother.