ON THE OTHER SIDE IS MARCH

A woman in her early 60s reflects on life while caring for both grandchildren and an aging mother in this novel, the first by a Faroese woman to be translated into English.

“When you throw a pebble in a pond, the ripples spread outwards. For the old it goes in the opposite direction. The world contracts in steadily shrinking circles,” the unnamed narrator muses. Her elderly mother is struggling to recall the word butter, and while her mother still lives independently, the daughter has noticed a worrying decline. Meanwhile, there are no spaces in the nursing home, and her own daughter needs help with child care. Sandwiched between the needs of the very young and the very old, our protagonist reflects on the caretaking that falls to women in this and every other generation: “Oh, you daughters of Eve! You silent heroines through the ages! You wiped off tears and sweat. No books detailing your exploits are crowding the bookshelves.” She misses the mother she knew and counted on, though on good days the two still reminisce together. Sorting through her mother’s photographs and handwritten letters, she relives moments like peat cutting, or filling the coal bucket. The writing is meditative, the sentences often fragmentary. “One day I too shall be but a photo,” she thinks. “Stopped in time.” At its most interesting, the book affords glimpses into a vanished way of life in the Faroe Islands, as when the mother, confused, “complains that someone has taken the barrel of salted pilot whale meat.” Elsewhere the story is a more general, familiar one about the caretaker’s role and the “immense strength” it takes “to remain dignified and even-tempered as your body so utterly betrays you. As your head slowly empties.”

A moving and honest portrayal of familial love and dependency.