Arran translator’s new book.
Anne Bruce is well known on Arran, having been Principal Teacher of English then Assistant Head at Arran High School and with her husband having run the Corrie Hotel during the time when their children were growing up here. After five years on the mainland as Head Teacher at Rosehall High School in Coatbridge, she is now enjoying retirement in their Corrie house – and has begun a new career as a translator. Anne studied Norwegian and English at Glasgow University and has travelled extensively in Scandinavia, and she has now, she says, returned to her ‘first loves of language and literature’. Certainly, her familiarity with the Nordic culture gives her translations great confidence and a sense of easiness.
Anne’s first translation was a crime thriller called Dregs, the sixth in a popular Norwegian series by Jørn Lier Horst, but the first to appear in the English language. She has now followed that up with a thoughtful and deeply moving book called I Should Have Lifted You Carefully Over, by Wenke Mühleisen.
The story centres on the narrator’s both loved and exasperating mother as she goes through the dwindling final days of her life, cared for by the daughter who writes the narrative. It is a blisteringly honest account of the conflicting feelings that can co-exist even though the tasks of lifting and washing and feeding are being so willingly undertaken. No mother is ever simply maternal, regardless of how much effort she puts into ensuring that her children are brought up in security and happiness. She also has immense ability to cause hurt. Mühleisen is accurate about this potentially painful relationship, and about the fact that sooner or later, the balance will shift. As they become independent, the young become the holders of power, faintly despising elderly parents who don’t understand modern technology or use online banking. It is their turn to suppress impatience and to experience the frustration of looking after someone who shows little sign of appreciation. As Mühleisen says of her own mother, ‘She no longer had any power over us. Had played herself out completely on the sidelines with her perpetual nagging and fussing about who should repair what and who had behaved badly or ought to be helped.’ But the helpless love is still present, and the coming death of the mother is going to be hard for the survivor as well as for the one whose life ends.
The book is written in short phrases, as if read later from brief notes jotted down at the time. Anne Bruce’s translation catches this perfectly. The mother’s life has been ‘…so trifling. Specific. The extent of the household budget. Making dinner. Shopping. Paying the electricity bill. And: Is he in a bad mood today?’ Yet there is admiration, too. ‘People who saw you felt at ease and smiled too. Talked and laughed … I was proud of you. I still am.’
For anyone who has ever felt guilty about not loving a difficult mother enough, this honest, direct and very beautiful book will come as a reassurance and comfort, although it pulls no punches. It speaks of an experience that cannot be avoided, and with no sentimentality at all, reveals underlying truth.
I Should Have Lifted You Carefully Over by Wenke Mühleisen, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce. Sandstone Press paperback, £7.99, ISBN 978-1-905207-64-0. Available from the Book and Card shop in Brodick.
