This Vital Absence: A Novel

“This Vital Absence is a thrilling novel about the lengths to which a woman goes in order to satisfy her obsessive questions about her origins.” —Foreword Reviews“An intriguing novel about the limits of obsession and the perplexing ways in which people relate to each other.” —Kirkus Reviews“This Vital Absence is a brilliant Rubik’s Cube of a novel. It is about the stories we tell—and how those stories twist, reveal patterns, and come apart. Sophia Veltfort writes, thrillingly, out of the negative space from which obsession grows, exposing both the generative and the destructive power of longing. It is a debut like no other I’ve read before, full of piercing insights, bracing wit, and bold revelations into the crucial intimacies that define us. Utterly unforgettable.” —Emily Fridlund, author of History of Wolves“This Vital Absence, Sophia Veltfort’s incandescent first novel, is a laser-sharp, wised-up comedy about matters of utter seriousness. Centered around the search for an unknown father, the story sweeps us into a tsunami of questions about where we, as individual beings, originated, and how we’ve come to be who and what we are. Reading Sophia Veltfort’s book I knew, early on, that we’ve got a significant new novelist in our midst.” —Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours“This Vital Absence is both a deft metafiction and a moving meditation on fatherhood, daughterhood, and sisterhood.” —J. Robert Lennon, author of Buzz Kill —