On the Other Side Is March

Faro is a Swedish island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and Norway. Its 55,000 inhabitants are descendants of Vikings and Celtic people. This book is one of the first to be translated from the Faroese. The author lives in the capital city of 14,000. She and Ingmar Bergman are the only people from the island that I have ever heard of. From that sample of two, they seem to me to live a dreamy life, far from reality, wherein they can live their own thoughts: “All women have been saddled with an excess of imagination. We all conjure up that biopic in our mind, intended for the big reel.”

This book is much like a dream state where bits of thought are stitched together. The basic story is of a woman who is caretaking for her increasingly forgetful mother. The longings and premature grief of anyone in that position are paramount in these thoughts. The reader is advised to go with the flow of this book.