Translations: Aistreann

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

Set in Ireland and Canada, Translations is the story of a failing
marriage. Dan, an Irishman through and through, is a professor at
Trinity College, Dublin. Julia, who comes from a family with Gaelic
roots in New Brunswick, has been lent diaries written in Gaelic in New
Brunswick during the early 1900s by an ancestor of hers, Cora
McGilchrist. Julia is dissatisfied with her life and needs to reconnect
with her home. The research and translation of these diaries gives her
an excuse to take her two children and fly across the Atlantic for the
first time in years.

As she traces the ups and downs of Cora’s life through a school for
the blind and a convent, New Brunswick social history, the countryside
in winter, and the housing conditions for the poor come alive. The
smells and sounds of the Dublin bars Dan frequents are also vividly
evoked.

Dan and Julia come from families made poor by alcoholism, and they have
both struggled to better themselves. But they are basically weak,
emotionally unstable people, and the failure of their marriage sets them
on a downward slide. Dan is faithful to his wife, although the
university does not believe this and only the intervention of a good
friend saves him from utter disgrace. Julia meets up with an old
boyfriend but in the end decides he is not for her. The well-drawn
protagonists of this interesting if disturbing story earn the reader’s
sympathy.