Sólrún Michelsen published in USA
Sólrún Michelsen’s award winning novel On the other side is March is now published in USA by Transit Books. Marita Thomsen translated the book into English from Faroese.
On the Other Side is March is an exquisite, darkly witty portrait of aging, memory, and multigenerational caretaking and it is the first novel by a Faroese woman author to come out in English. It was published in UK in 2023 and now in the US. The book is published in: Denmark, Norway, Greece, Hungary, UK, Ethiopia and USA.
The narrator of On the Other Side is March has reached her early sixties. Her kids are grown and out of the house and she’s faced with a time that, for years, she always seemed to be looking toward—a time when she wasn't needed by somebody or something. But now, with her mother’s declining health, she finds herself revisiting childhood scenes, family hymns, and folk songs—revealing a lifetime of love, duty, awe, and regret. She tends to her mother amid the stark rhythms of Faroese life, waiting for a new nursing home that never arrives, and confronts the reality of being part of the "army of women" who inherit care. In her grief and private goodbye to her mother, however, is also a gorgeous meditation about life, as translator Marita Thomsen says in her translator's note, "in its ragged mundane glory."
Praise for On the Other Side is March:
"Elegiac… With poignant grace, Michelsen examines life and death through the most elemental bond between mother and child."—Booklist, starred review
"A spare yet powerful meditation on mortality... There is a lovely economy to Michelsen's writing."—Publishers Weekly
"A moving and honest portrayal of familial love and dependency."—Kirkus Reviews.
