Nothing Happened

by Ebba Haslund, Barbara Sjoholm, Barbara Wilson

Edle, a Norwegian woman looks back on her college days, her relationships with Bente and Gro, fellow students, and her inability to accept her lesbianism

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Lesbian, Novels, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

Reviews

[jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Å, Edle Henriksen, du er blitt min nærmeste venn. Du lever i Oslos gater, nedover Karl Johan og ut på Universitetsplassen. Du sitter i lesesalen med nesa dypt i en bok. Du bor på hybel og drikker nok te på divanen din ennå. Du lever.

Et viktig skår av norsk litteratur—oversett da den kom ut i 1948—men utgitt på ny etter 70-årenes kvinnebevegelse. Historien her puster som om den var skrevet i går. Edles problemer og tanker er så gjenkjennelige, så ekte, at en glemmer bokas alder. En riktig fryd å lese!

En overraskende håpefull bok om lesbiske forhold til tross for ... Anbefaler alle jeg kjenner å lese denne.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this randomly in a bookstore and was overjoyed. (Norway? Gayness? Dette er mitt "wheelhouse"!) I was surprised I had never heard of it and wasn't sure what to expect. And wow! This was a sad read, but not in the "tragic lesbian" way that I was expecting.

Edle, the protaganist, was at times relatable and at times painful to watch. The story's stakes are low, yet mean everything. Tragedy is found in the interpersonal--the ways one loves, fails to love, or fails to be honest about said love. (The real tragedy of WWII is yet to come.) The last chapter was touching and gave me hope that Edle could, at last, let herself blossom.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting Norwegian novel published in 1948 and apparently condemned for its "perversity." It's hard to believe that the novel's subject--one's young woman's admitted (not acted upon) attraction for another--was so scandalous, but the author Ebba Haslund was clearly brave and out of sync with her time.

[lumbagofio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me alegra no haberla abandonado al poco de empezarla porque me hubiese perdido una lectura maravillosa. Debería ser más conocida methinks.

La prota narra su vida con una prosa cargada de emociones en la que plasma todas sus penurias, inseguridades, locuras, opiniones, anhelos y arrepentimientos.
Tiene un tinte académico al tratar principalmente sobre sus años en la universidad, así que hace referencia a numerosas obras y autores reconocidos. También debate temas sociales, filosóficos, políticos e históricos, desde el feminismo o la homosexualidad hasta la invasión alemana de Noruega.

En general, ha sido como leer la carta de una amiga con la que te llevas las manos a la cabeza constantemente. Pero con la que en otras ocasiones te sientes reflejada o conmovida.

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was excellent. It’s extremely forward thinking, sympathetic, and ultimately hopeful for a lesbian novel originally published in 1948, and the level of realism in the narrative and the depiction of the characters makes it seem as if it could have been published within the last twenty years. What stuck out to me the most, though, was how realistic (the protagonist) Edle’s thoughts and feelings were, and how sharply and meticulously they were delineated. Personally speaking, her sense of alienation from her peers, her self-consciousness, and her anxiety were almost ridiculously relatable, strange considering this was published about 80 years ago. The writing style was sophisticated and skillful enough it was notable, and it didn’t have that strangely insubstantial quality that much work in translation does. The book also didn’t have any extraneous elements that needed to be excised – it was short, condensed to the perfect size, with each passage having meaning and importance. Nothing Happened should certainly be help up as an old lesbian classic, alongside Strachey’s Olivia, and it’s a shame this book isn’t as well known as such titles. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

[Myriam Bourgeois · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Very honest. I love the internal dialogue.
The end is really wonderful too. The understand of herself that she reaches and the paths she wants to take to acheive those goals of bettering herself

[Myriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Very honest. I love the internal dialogue. Very dark humor-y. I'm not usually into that but really works with this book.
The end is really wonderful too. The understanding of herself that she reaches and the paths she wants to take to acheive those goals of bettering herself

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard slay av Ebba Haslund

[Daniella Pozo · Rating 5 out of 5]

So stunning

[zararam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most relatable and interesting nothing I’ve ever read about happening.

Found this book randomly in a second hand bookstore in the San Juan Islands in Washington State. Picked it up for the cover art and bought it for the promise of a story of a queer female university student.

This book is written beautifully and while it’s not explicit when it comes to sexuality, it pulled at my heart strings with its discussion of friendship, love, purpose, and honesty.

I can’t recommend this book enough.

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pioneering book, published in 1948, about a young Norwegian woman searching for her sexuality. Although very tame by modern standards, the introduction tells us that one book critic “was horrified by its glorification of a perverse relationship.” The main events of the story take place in Oslo in 1939. But it’s written from a perspective eight years later as the woman approaches her 30s.



There is very good writing:

“Everything about that day is alive for me, even though I haven’t recalled it for years, have done everything not to recall it, have shoved it down haphazardly, packed it away like summer clothes in a chest and turned the key. I’ve kept it locked for eight whole years. Extraordinary that I can still take it out so entire, so unwrinkled – shake it out and have it fall in folds just as before. Even the fragrance is preserved, that faraway, thrilling fragrance of gentle spring light and sun-dried pavements.”

“I can’t be the only one to feel like this. There must be others who are clumsy and awkward when it comes to fragile situations. Maybe most people are. In the theater and in literature everything is so solidly and logically built up. Dialogue and plot are always significant, pointing in a single direction and illuminating people’s characters in incisive flashes. But reality…? A meaningless hodge-podge of irrelevant, unimportant details. You stumble around, say all kinds of random things, hackneyed and conventional, with a little truth mixed in. But the tiny pearls drown in an ocean of triviality. The overall impression is one of disorder and nothing is clear. What about our precious individuality that we hold in such great esteem? It’s just a pile of impressions, our own and others, shoved together aimlessly and accidentally.”



Eight years later the woman is a school teacher, lonely, bored, friendless. “My cup has slowly filled with useless, dreary days.” As she looks back she is finally coming to terms with her sexuality and how it has shaped her life. She thinks back to a young man she was ‘in love with’ and lost to another woman; eight years later she can admit to herself that she was never in love with him, she was in love with a female friend.

She thinks of suicide because fate has made her an ‘ugly’ woman – her words. She remembers remarks about her appearance that cruel people said to her or that she overheard starting when she was a child. We empathize with her. And what is she to do now? There was no ‘Girlstown’ in Oslo in the 1940s and no on-line dating services. Plus she’s a schoolteacher – what about her reputation?

Somehow she blames herself for all this. The author quotes Aldous Huxley early in the book: “ ‘Everything that happens to one is intrinsically like oneself.’ A dry, boring person is doomed to live a dry, boring life. Everything that happens to that person is necessarily of no consequence. One is locked into one’s own trivial self with no means of escape.”

A good story with very good writing.



The author (1917-2009) wrote ten or so novels, collections of essays and children’s books. The author wrote in Norwegian although her family traveled extensively and she was actually born in Seattle. She went to school at times in England, Germany and France. She was even a politician in Norway. This book appears to be the only one translated into English.

Photos of Oslo in the 1930's. Top from pinterest.com, middle from flickr.com
The author from nordicwomensliterature.net

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, and prettily written - or at least prettily translated! Sadly, the title is of course a major spoiler and really nothing does happen... it's more like a rambling memoir full of regret and introspection than anything else. But it's a quick read and while not exactly gripping, is still interesting enough to keep going with. Edle, the narrator, is very awkward and self-deprecating, at times this gets to be a bit too much but on the whole she's very calm and quiet and believable.

There isn't as much gay as lists mentioning this book, and the introduction would suggest. Really only a few brief mentions about how Edle loved Gro at the start, and then a few more at the end... there's a bit of angst about that too of course but not much. Really, nothing happens in the book... it could have been so much more dramatic and angsty and interesting but there are just a couple of thoughts that are then not terribly fleshed out. Okay, so it was written in 1948! But still, I was expecting a little more. There was much more on Edle's relationship with Hans Jørgen and she never went and thought of Gro when kissing him or anything. It was all a bit flat. Also, Hans Jørgen's full name was written out every single time he was mentioned! Never just Hans, always Hans Jørgen. It's not like there were other Hans', and no one else's last name was mentioned in this fashion. It kind of irked me. :P

The university setting was interesting and in so many ways familiar. I did like this book but it's not one to rave about. ALSO, omg ugliest cover ever!!

[Narkitsa Orada · Rating 3 out of 5]

What do I say about this? It's a nice little book, but somewhat bland. The characters all rang true to me, but there was something insubstantial in the premise. Its saving grace, aside from the fact that it's very readable, is that there are some truly beautiful paragraphs describing Edle's inner life. Too bad there weren't more of them. Maybe something was lost in translation, but there's something unsatisfying about Edle's love for Gro. This is a woman who she was in love with, who is now dead, but the prose describing their interactions is rather flat. If it didn't say on the back that the novel had a lesbian theme, I think I would have been surprised to find out it was Gro she was really in love with. Her grief doesn't seem entirely real either: it's very pure and ethereal, sort of a sympathy card grief, with no real pathos.

[Julianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, sad book of longing as a Norwegian woman in pre-WW2 Norway is at University, navigating life and finding she is her own worst enemy when it comes to any and all relationships. The first person view is a timeless study of humanity’s frailness.

[Pat Winick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this 28 years ago, liked it a lot, don't remember anything else about it.