A grief memoir unlike any other by a midwife who suddenly loses her husband when he is 38.
Author: Sanni Isometsä
Finnish original: Katoamiskertomus
Publisher: S&S, 2026
Genre: Literary fiction
Number of pages: 208 pp.
Reading material: Finnish original, English sample
Sanni Isometsä’s debut is an account of two disappearances. The first is her husband’s: sudden, medically unremarkable at the outset, catastrophic within days. The other happened long before.
The precise prose moves between you and I, addressed to the dead, then reclaimed by the living, described as breathing in and out. It is written in fragments, the way memory returns: out of order, out of proportion, arriving unbidden.
In Anatomy of Absence, grief is physical before it is anything else –something the body sets about doing without asking permission. Underneath runs the fact that grief cannot solve: the dead do not age, and the distance widens every year. Isometsä writes about grief without solemnity and self-pity. It asks nothing of the reader but attention.
A remarkable debut from a new voice, Anatomy of Absense is governed by one question: we treat ordinary life as a gift already given, ours to keep. Who promised us that?
“This personal account of a spouse’s death is sensationally good […] It displays astonishing confidence in its expression and style. It articulates with clarity a subject on which words usually fail. […] A sensational debut for a new author and an invaluable gift for those coming to terms with loss.” – Helsingin sanomatnewspaper
“An exceptionally fine autofictional debut […] Every sentence in this concise book is a diamond.”– Eeva Magazine
About the author:
Sanni Isometsä