A gripping story about a father’s love and the sense found in senselessness
Author: Harry Salmenniemi
Finnish original: Sydänhämärä
Publisher: Siltala
Genre: literary fiction
Number of pages: 215
Reading material: Finnish original, English sample, English synopsis
A week before the writer’s second baby is due to be born, his firstborn gets seriously ill and is taken to the intensive care unit. The father keeps vigil by his son’s bed in the hospital and at home, observing everything around them. Things must be done without thinking. You must go on, days on end, each day filled to the brim with tasks. When his son starts to get better, the writer is grateful and surprised, and understands that he doesn’t under – stand life at all. At home, the everyday goes on with its nappies, cooking and washing. Deep feelings are impractical in the day-to-day living. They have too many dimensions. Everyday holds destruction and chaos, both of which need to be in order.
I need to make Maria and myself a coffee, and she needs hers with hot milk. Milk is depressing to me. Milk is white and tiresome. I cut chunks of apple for Joel’s quark and crush some cashew nuts besides. I do this with utmost care, so diligently that I end up crushing some of myself into it. I cut up apples, knuckles and fingers. (Translated by Aleksi Koponen)
Heartmist is a novel in which the biggest emotions meet an abstract, ironic mind. It captures the truth of a human life, the fabric of which is made of exhausting day-to-day, obligations and duties. Behind those, nonetheless, shines something exceptionally bright.
“The gentle humour of Heartmist comes from the perfect collaboration between irony and an empathetic gaze. […] The text is charming in its seemingly quotidian idiom, which Salmenniemi manages to charge full of emotion.” – Suomen Kuvalehti magazine
About the author
Harry Salmenniemi