“I just don’t know if I can continue in this relationship if you keep acting this way,” I told Janet.  “When you really love someone,” she said, echoing our therapist, “you have to make sacrifices and accept them for who they are, warts and all.” We were lying in bed, talking in the same circles…

Translated by Marita Thomsen, On the Other Side is March by Sólrún Michelsen is a meditation on the many losses of age and how these losses are balanced—sometimes—by insight and wisdom. This slim novel, which got under my skin and into my dreams, is also the first book by a Faroese woman to appear in…

Lucy shows the signs.  Her mother hovers. “Lucy? Lucy? Are you listening to me?”  She raises a vague gaze to her mom. Lately, Lucy holds most things that make their way to her (homework assignment, detention slip, boyfriend) in a similarly vague fashion—lightly, poised to let them go. Finding them in her possession, she murmurs…

“You’re a corn stalk in a field of soybeans,” he says. This, from a most vulnerable position, down on one knee, peering up at the cheer captain. In his open palm he’s holding a Ring Pop. It’s still in the packaging. “Ew,” she replies, with a sideways glance. By now a small end-of-the-day crowd has…

My mother always says, “A little water never hurt anyone.” She means, don’t worry if you get caught in the rain. You’re not made of sugar. You won’t melt. She means, don’t worry if you knock over your water glass at that fancy restaurant on your second date, and the glass breaks and soaks the…