What do you think?
Rate this book
If Only
A groundbreaking but timeless early work from one of the world's most heralded novelists
A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the mailbox on its post, but higher up the sky is blue, clear, the sun has come back. She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death.
So opens Vigids Hjorth’s ground-breaking novel from 2001, which melds the yearning, doomed potency of Annie Ernaux’s A Simple Passion with the scale and force of Anna Karenina. It asks, can passion be mistaken for love? And proceeds to document the destruction a decade defined by such a misconstruction can yield on a life.
A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the mailbox on its post, but higher up the sky is blue, clear, the sun has come back. She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death.
So opens Vigids Hjorth’s ground-breaking novel from 2001, which melds the yearning, doomed potency of Annie Ernaux’s A Simple Passion with the scale and force of Anna Karenina. It asks, can passion be mistaken for love? And proceeds to document the destruction a decade defined by such a misconstruction can yield on a life.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
151 people are currently reading
3916 people want to read
About the author
Vigdis Hjorth
68 books774 followersVigdis Hjorth (born 1959) is a Norwegian novelist. She grew up in Oslo, and has studied philosophy, literature and political science.
In 1983, she published her first novel, the children's book "Pelle-Ragnar i den gule gården" for which she received Norsk kulturråd's debut award. Her first book for an adult audience was "Drama med Hilde" (1987). "Om bare" from 2001 is considered her most important novel, and a roman à clef.
Hjorth has three children and lives in Asker.
In 1983, she published her first novel, the children's book "Pelle-Ragnar i den gule gården" for which she received Norsk kulturråd's debut award. Her first book for an adult audience was "Drama med Hilde" (1987). "Om bare" from 2001 is considered her most important novel, and a roman à clef.
Hjorth has three children and lives in Asker.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 311 reviews
August 29, 2024
Just read 300 pages of a woman obsessively salivating over an absolute arsehole of a man when she should have dumped him on page 2 and saved me the time
October 20, 2024
If only this book was about half as long as it is.
343 pages is far far far too many pages for this story of obsessive, co-dependent, toxic, alcoholic, abusive "love".
The novel initially reminded me of Annie Erneaux' Simple Passion, a very short, deeply interior novel about a woman's obsessive affair with a man. Like Erneaux, Hjorth did a fantastic job of showing the way people can be sucked into a vortex, how a relationship can be the central pull in a person's life, even if they have a marriage, career and children. Suddenly everything fades and the relationship becomes the only important thing, the only real focus.
As I said, she did a great job of that. It was even kind of funny, because the man in question isn't particularly attractive, and the sex they have initially isn't anything special. An unremarkable bald guy in a light coloured trench coat - it's funny that her whole life fades into the background for him. It was funny too because the woman is a member of the Dramatist's Association - ironic, as her personal life couldn't possibly be more dramatic.
I was intrigued. I knew this relationship was doomed, and my intrigue was about how that would happen. What would the hearse of this relationship look like?
The story moved glacially, though. It took absolutely forever for the relationship to even to move from occasional lovers to people who are in somewhat of a relationship. At least 150 pages. By the time they were together (and that's a loose term by anyone's standards), I was already sort of losing my mojo with the novel. It's the repetitiveness of the story. Ida and Arnold constantly accuse each other of being unfaithful (and more often than not he is, trench coat and all), there's a lot of drinking and recriminations and travel and sweeping under the carpet and embarrassing public outbursts, and so much making love in hotel rooms, and then it degenerates further into sex clubs and random group encounters, and still they live another day, each day another day to inflict something awful amid these baffling high-flying feelings of love. "I'll die without you." "I'll kill you if you leave me."
I found myself thinking about Elizabeth McNeill's novel Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair, in which a toxic, sexually obsessive relationship deteriorates in much the same way... but in far less time.
There are no chapter breaks, which didn't help me. It was one long 343 page chapter that grew more tedious for me as it went on.
I don't mean to say that this book isn't without its merits. I really do admire how the author captured the sickness of a relationship, and the torture and pain two people can inflict on each other, because it struck me as absolutely realistic. She also captured the mystery of what happens between two people, for better or worse. Each person bringing their complex baggage, expectations, patterns, insecurities, and what keeps a person coming back even when it seems totally unbearable. (Plus, I'm in love with that cover!) I just don't think this particular story justified all those pages.
343 pages is far far far too many pages for this story of obsessive, co-dependent, toxic, alcoholic, abusive "love".
The novel initially reminded me of Annie Erneaux' Simple Passion, a very short, deeply interior novel about a woman's obsessive affair with a man. Like Erneaux, Hjorth did a fantastic job of showing the way people can be sucked into a vortex, how a relationship can be the central pull in a person's life, even if they have a marriage, career and children. Suddenly everything fades and the relationship becomes the only important thing, the only real focus.
As I said, she did a great job of that. It was even kind of funny, because the man in question isn't particularly attractive, and the sex they have initially isn't anything special. An unremarkable bald guy in a light coloured trench coat - it's funny that her whole life fades into the background for him. It was funny too because the woman is a member of the Dramatist's Association - ironic, as her personal life couldn't possibly be more dramatic.
I was intrigued. I knew this relationship was doomed, and my intrigue was about how that would happen. What would the hearse of this relationship look like?
The story moved glacially, though. It took absolutely forever for the relationship to even to move from occasional lovers to people who are in somewhat of a relationship. At least 150 pages. By the time they were together (and that's a loose term by anyone's standards), I was already sort of losing my mojo with the novel. It's the repetitiveness of the story. Ida and Arnold constantly accuse each other of being unfaithful (and more often than not he is, trench coat and all), there's a lot of drinking and recriminations and travel and sweeping under the carpet and embarrassing public outbursts, and so much making love in hotel rooms, and then it degenerates further into sex clubs and random group encounters, and still they live another day, each day another day to inflict something awful amid these baffling high-flying feelings of love. "I'll die without you." "I'll kill you if you leave me."
I found myself thinking about Elizabeth McNeill's novel Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair, in which a toxic, sexually obsessive relationship deteriorates in much the same way... but in far less time.
There are no chapter breaks, which didn't help me. It was one long 343 page chapter that grew more tedious for me as it went on.
I don't mean to say that this book isn't without its merits. I really do admire how the author captured the sickness of a relationship, and the torture and pain two people can inflict on each other, because it struck me as absolutely realistic. She also captured the mystery of what happens between two people, for better or worse. Each person bringing their complex baggage, expectations, patterns, insecurities, and what keeps a person coming back even when it seems totally unbearable. (Plus, I'm in love with that cover!) I just don't think this particular story justified all those pages.
January 29, 2025
Look, he dances with another Tove Ditlevsen wrote. And yet I don’t leave. Because suffering is a link that brings the magical pleasure happiness can never deliver.
If Only (2024) is Charlotte Barslund's translation of an earlier (2001) work, Om bare by the ever-fascinating Vigdis Hjorth.
The novel is centred around Ida who is introduced as follows:
A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. She writes radio plays and edits a magazine on the same subject. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the mailbox on its post, but higher up the sky is blue, clear, the sun has come back. She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self.
The book is narrated in a close third first-person perspective in the present tense, the observer perhaps an older Ida, aged around 40, as is suggested in a brief introductory chapter written by "I, your mature self", looking back on a herself aged 19, "wretched" with pain" and "shame" from something she felt "mortifying", with her older self wanting to comfort her and say she is no longer ashamed.
This hint at an underlying trauma lies deeply in the background of a story which is ultimately about Ada - a theatre dramatists - long and destructive relationship with Arnold Blum, an academic specialising in translations of Brecht. The two meet, both married with young children at the time, and start an almost accidental affair, when she casually mentions at the end of the day that if it's too cold to go outside to the building where he is accomodated, he can sleep in her room:
Later, when they finally retire, he follows her up the stairs, he took me seriously, she thinks. He is of slim build, he has a diamond stud in one ear, he might be gay, they can sleep top to tail. She undresses and gets into the bed. He undresses, fetches a glass of water from the bathroom and gets into the bed, his head at the same end as hers, he takes out his contact lenses and puts them in the glass.
'Mind you don't drink it,' he says.
She turns out the light. He touches her as if they are going to make love. They try to make love, but he hasn't come by the time dawn breaks.
'Aren't you married?' he says. 'Yes.'
'Me too.'
'I thought you were gay,' she says.
'I have a three-year-old son,' he says, he sounds offended.
She is giving the first presentation that morning so they get up. Her body feels strangely light. While she is in the bathroom, she wonders if he will be there when she comes out, he is, it makes her happy, he stands naked on the floor and he has a scar that reaches from his armpit to his shoulder.
"What's that?'
'A scar. They don't call me Scarnold for nothing.'
[the 'don't drink it' becoming their first 'thing' - thankfully rather than 'Scarnold']
But as per the above, 'she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self' and Arnold is the catalyst that both causes her to have an almost impossible affair (they live in different cities) and break-up her almost too happy marriage to a too easy-going husband:
She said yes to him in order to survive. Because he smiles, is easy-going, doesn't ask questions.
Because he doesn't grow, he is nailed too solidly together for that. He chews and the inside of her brain creaks. His voice on the phone makes her brain ache: Oh, that's nice! Long time no see. Great. Absolutely. Excellent!
She wants to punch him in the face to make it split! Is she destroying him slowly without him noticing, steamrolling him without him noticing, pushing him nearer the precipice without him noticing? I have to get out of here. Out of here. Her daughter clings to her at night, why is she so on edge, something is wrong. Does he go to their daughter's room at night? When he comes home late from parties she can't be bothered to go to. She hears him come in, but he doesn't come to her in the double bed, what does he do?
The answer is that he sleeps on the sofa here so as not to disturb her, but here again is another hint at an underlying trauma in Ida's past family life (although I may be reading themes that became more explicit in Hjorth's later fiction).
Her initial relationship with Arnold over several years is one-sided and largely one only in her perception - she pursuing him almost obsessively, he happy to sleep together when convenient, but remaining uncontactable for long periods, and unwilling to either leave (or tell) his wife while she tells her husband and asks for a divorce a year into their affair. Indeed Arnold is also unwilling to stop having flings with other people - seducing his students, or, as with Ida, those he meets on academic conferences around the country and internationally.
This is what she says to the few people she discusses him with: ‘He's coming!’
They don't believe her. Her obsession with the professor in Trondheim is unhealthy, a sign of how damaged she is.
‘He's coming!"
'Ida!'
He is!'
When did you first meet him?"
'Three years ago.'
How many times have you seen him during those three years?'
'Seven.'
‘How many of those times did he make the first move?'
‘Two.’
'How many times has he called you?'
'Many times.'
‘How many times has he called you and actually said something?'
'Three.'
'Do you think that's a lot?'
'It's enough.
'Ida!'
The novel doesn't contains many references to time, but we do learn that the day Ida asked for a divorce was the day King Olav died, so 17th January 1991, setting the month she met Arnold in January 1990 and the story therefore over the 1990s.
And this is a novel that couldn’t be written set in 2024 (or even 2004) or rather would play out very differently in the age of mobile phones and social media. Now she would likely cyberstalk Arnold, bombard him with WhatsApp messages and fret when they had been left unread for more than 5 minutes (or even worse, read but not replied to ... and get stressed on the three dots of death), and call his mobile at 2am. Here she sends letters then wakes weeks or months for any reply, calls him on a landline if she happens to have access to one and she knows a number where he may be found, follows his career through academic articles and newspaper pieces, and, particularly when he is overseas, loses sight of him for months on end, the occasional postcard aside. It's only in the novel's closing section that one of them acquires a mobile.
During this time she has, what to the reader seems a far more sensible and productive relationship with another man Trond (the resonance with Trondheim where Arnold lives can not be coincendental) who seems oddly accepting that Arnold is her preferred lover, but does make the ultimate romantic gesture.
He borrows a cabin in the mountains and invites her to come with him. Her children are with their father, she doesn't have to tell anyone, there is no one to tell, if she goes missing, no one will wonder where she is, no one will miss her except Trond. Trond is on his own as is she. They pack the car, outdoor clothes, indoor clothes, bedlinens, towels.
They stop on the way to buy groceries for breakfast, lunch, dinner, wine. He jingles the keys: Were going to a cabin.
She drives, he drinks beer and reads Thomas Bernhard aloud to her as it grows dark.
What more could anyone want? Well a more emotionally abusive relationship it seems, and at the novel's midway point, she and Arnold do become more of a couple, spending increasing time together, but, as there years together roll forward, he turns out to have a toxic combination of chronic unfaithfulness and yet extreme jealousy. And when, towards the novel's end, she finally pulls the plug, he leaves a succession of aggressively pleading messages on her answerphone, one of which appeals to another literary reference to explain why they belong together, one she mentally refutes, playing back the conversation she could have.
Tove Ditlevsen, he says on her answering machine, 'could cope with much more than you. You're a poor imitation of Tove Ditlevsen, he says. 'What I have done is nothing compared to what Victor Andreasen did to Tove Ditlevsen.' The Danish author Tove Ditlevsen and Victor Andreasen, the editor-in-chief of Ekstra Bladet, stayed together their whole lives, almost, no matter what one did to the other.
Because they loved each other. 'We love each other, Ida!
You know that!'
Tove Ditlevsen, she answers in their imagined conver-sations, ended up killing herself. Tove Ditlevsen was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and Victor Andreasen couldn't take any more and left her, she reminds herself. Perhaps Tove Ditlevsen should have left Victor Andreasen much sooner. Then she might not have ended up in a psychiatric hospital, she might not have killed herself, who knows.
Tove Ditlevsen planned to write a book about her life with Victor Andreasen, whom she referred to as a highly intelligent psychopath, did you know that, the title of which would be The Woman Who Put Up With Everything.
[...]
It would take a novel to explain to him what it was like for her, a completely different story to the one he would have written.
Which is perhaps this book, except it seems more Ada telling her own story and leaving us to judge the two of them.
In many respects this shouldn't work - 340 pages and almost of a decade of a relationship so dysfunctional that the reader isn't even asking 'why don't you leave him' as 'why did you keep pursuing him in the first place', even from the first page - "Scarnold" ... really??, even Ida thinks "I bet he says that to all the girls."
But it does work, as the length of my review shows, the novel so well done the reader can't look away from the car crash, even comes to part understand both parties, and, in addition, there is the small glimpse of a theme that would be more explicit in the author's later Will and Testament (in Charlotte Barslund's translation) whose Norwegian original was explosive as per my review, even leading one of her family to write a counter novel.
Rather wonderfully from the TLS I learn that the figure of Arnold Blum here was based on Arild Linneberg, professor of literature at the University of Bergen, with whom Hjorth had a relationship, and that last year he also published a counternovel Bare om Arnold Busk, fortalt av han selv (Only About Arnold Busk) giving the other side of the story, although this seems a friendlier affair with Hjorth helping promote it.
Recommended.
If Only (2024) is Charlotte Barslund's translation of an earlier (2001) work, Om bare by the ever-fascinating Vigdis Hjorth.
The novel is centred around Ida who is introduced as follows:
A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. She writes radio plays and edits a magazine on the same subject. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the mailbox on its post, but higher up the sky is blue, clear, the sun has come back. She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self.
The book is narrated in a close third first-person perspective in the present tense, the observer perhaps an older Ida, aged around 40, as is suggested in a brief introductory chapter written by "I, your mature self", looking back on a herself aged 19, "wretched" with pain" and "shame" from something she felt "mortifying", with her older self wanting to comfort her and say she is no longer ashamed.
This hint at an underlying trauma lies deeply in the background of a story which is ultimately about Ada - a theatre dramatists - long and destructive relationship with Arnold Blum, an academic specialising in translations of Brecht. The two meet, both married with young children at the time, and start an almost accidental affair, when she casually mentions at the end of the day that if it's too cold to go outside to the building where he is accomodated, he can sleep in her room:
Later, when they finally retire, he follows her up the stairs, he took me seriously, she thinks. He is of slim build, he has a diamond stud in one ear, he might be gay, they can sleep top to tail. She undresses and gets into the bed. He undresses, fetches a glass of water from the bathroom and gets into the bed, his head at the same end as hers, he takes out his contact lenses and puts them in the glass.
'Mind you don't drink it,' he says.
She turns out the light. He touches her as if they are going to make love. They try to make love, but he hasn't come by the time dawn breaks.
'Aren't you married?' he says. 'Yes.'
'Me too.'
'I thought you were gay,' she says.
'I have a three-year-old son,' he says, he sounds offended.
She is giving the first presentation that morning so they get up. Her body feels strangely light. While she is in the bathroom, she wonders if he will be there when she comes out, he is, it makes her happy, he stands naked on the floor and he has a scar that reaches from his armpit to his shoulder.
"What's that?'
'A scar. They don't call me Scarnold for nothing.'
[the 'don't drink it' becoming their first 'thing' - thankfully rather than 'Scarnold']
But as per the above, 'she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self' and Arnold is the catalyst that both causes her to have an almost impossible affair (they live in different cities) and break-up her almost too happy marriage to a too easy-going husband:
She said yes to him in order to survive. Because he smiles, is easy-going, doesn't ask questions.
Because he doesn't grow, he is nailed too solidly together for that. He chews and the inside of her brain creaks. His voice on the phone makes her brain ache: Oh, that's nice! Long time no see. Great. Absolutely. Excellent!
She wants to punch him in the face to make it split! Is she destroying him slowly without him noticing, steamrolling him without him noticing, pushing him nearer the precipice without him noticing? I have to get out of here. Out of here. Her daughter clings to her at night, why is she so on edge, something is wrong. Does he go to their daughter's room at night? When he comes home late from parties she can't be bothered to go to. She hears him come in, but he doesn't come to her in the double bed, what does he do?
The answer is that he sleeps on the sofa here so as not to disturb her, but here again is another hint at an underlying trauma in Ida's past family life (although I may be reading themes that became more explicit in Hjorth's later fiction).
Her initial relationship with Arnold over several years is one-sided and largely one only in her perception - she pursuing him almost obsessively, he happy to sleep together when convenient, but remaining uncontactable for long periods, and unwilling to either leave (or tell) his wife while she tells her husband and asks for a divorce a year into their affair. Indeed Arnold is also unwilling to stop having flings with other people - seducing his students, or, as with Ida, those he meets on academic conferences around the country and internationally.
This is what she says to the few people she discusses him with: ‘He's coming!’
They don't believe her. Her obsession with the professor in Trondheim is unhealthy, a sign of how damaged she is.
‘He's coming!"
'Ida!'
He is!'
When did you first meet him?"
'Three years ago.'
How many times have you seen him during those three years?'
'Seven.'
‘How many of those times did he make the first move?'
‘Two.’
'How many times has he called you?'
'Many times.'
‘How many times has he called you and actually said something?'
'Three.'
'Do you think that's a lot?'
'It's enough.
'Ida!'
The novel doesn't contains many references to time, but we do learn that the day Ida asked for a divorce was the day King Olav died, so 17th January 1991, setting the month she met Arnold in January 1990 and the story therefore over the 1990s.
And this is a novel that couldn’t be written set in 2024 (or even 2004) or rather would play out very differently in the age of mobile phones and social media. Now she would likely cyberstalk Arnold, bombard him with WhatsApp messages and fret when they had been left unread for more than 5 minutes (or even worse, read but not replied to ... and get stressed on the three dots of death), and call his mobile at 2am. Here she sends letters then wakes weeks or months for any reply, calls him on a landline if she happens to have access to one and she knows a number where he may be found, follows his career through academic articles and newspaper pieces, and, particularly when he is overseas, loses sight of him for months on end, the occasional postcard aside. It's only in the novel's closing section that one of them acquires a mobile.
During this time she has, what to the reader seems a far more sensible and productive relationship with another man Trond (the resonance with Trondheim where Arnold lives can not be coincendental) who seems oddly accepting that Arnold is her preferred lover, but does make the ultimate romantic gesture.
He borrows a cabin in the mountains and invites her to come with him. Her children are with their father, she doesn't have to tell anyone, there is no one to tell, if she goes missing, no one will wonder where she is, no one will miss her except Trond. Trond is on his own as is she. They pack the car, outdoor clothes, indoor clothes, bedlinens, towels.
They stop on the way to buy groceries for breakfast, lunch, dinner, wine. He jingles the keys: Were going to a cabin.
She drives, he drinks beer and reads Thomas Bernhard aloud to her as it grows dark.
What more could anyone want? Well a more emotionally abusive relationship it seems, and at the novel's midway point, she and Arnold do become more of a couple, spending increasing time together, but, as there years together roll forward, he turns out to have a toxic combination of chronic unfaithfulness and yet extreme jealousy. And when, towards the novel's end, she finally pulls the plug, he leaves a succession of aggressively pleading messages on her answerphone, one of which appeals to another literary reference to explain why they belong together, one she mentally refutes, playing back the conversation she could have.
Tove Ditlevsen, he says on her answering machine, 'could cope with much more than you. You're a poor imitation of Tove Ditlevsen, he says. 'What I have done is nothing compared to what Victor Andreasen did to Tove Ditlevsen.' The Danish author Tove Ditlevsen and Victor Andreasen, the editor-in-chief of Ekstra Bladet, stayed together their whole lives, almost, no matter what one did to the other.
Because they loved each other. 'We love each other, Ida!
You know that!'
Tove Ditlevsen, she answers in their imagined conver-sations, ended up killing herself. Tove Ditlevsen was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and Victor Andreasen couldn't take any more and left her, she reminds herself. Perhaps Tove Ditlevsen should have left Victor Andreasen much sooner. Then she might not have ended up in a psychiatric hospital, she might not have killed herself, who knows.
Tove Ditlevsen planned to write a book about her life with Victor Andreasen, whom she referred to as a highly intelligent psychopath, did you know that, the title of which would be The Woman Who Put Up With Everything.
[...]
It would take a novel to explain to him what it was like for her, a completely different story to the one he would have written.
Which is perhaps this book, except it seems more Ada telling her own story and leaving us to judge the two of them.
In many respects this shouldn't work - 340 pages and almost of a decade of a relationship so dysfunctional that the reader isn't even asking 'why don't you leave him' as 'why did you keep pursuing him in the first place', even from the first page - "Scarnold" ... really??, even Ida thinks "I bet he says that to all the girls."
But it does work, as the length of my review shows, the novel so well done the reader can't look away from the car crash, even comes to part understand both parties, and, in addition, there is the small glimpse of a theme that would be more explicit in the author's later Will and Testament (in Charlotte Barslund's translation) whose Norwegian original was explosive as per my review, even leading one of her family to write a counter novel.
Rather wonderfully from the TLS I learn that the figure of Arnold Blum here was based on Arild Linneberg, professor of literature at the University of Bergen, with whom Hjorth had a relationship, and that last year he also published a counternovel Bare om Arnold Busk, fortalt av han selv (Only About Arnold Busk) giving the other side of the story, although this seems a friendlier affair with Hjorth helping promote it.
Recommended.
November 4, 2022
Du behöver ett stycke mört kött av typen Ida Heier, och ett rejält stycke vällagrad fläsksida á la Arnold Busk. Börja med att snitta köttet. För samman bitarna och marinera otroligt länge i rigorösa mängder vin. Tillsätt lidelse, kreativa yrken, otrohet, skilsmässa och gränslöshet. Häll på mer vin. Och öl. Banka nu köttet rejält, allrahelst Ida-biten. Krydda med obehag och rör våldsamt. Det kommer att rinna över men det är meningen. Eftersom det här är en Hjorth-bok smula över Brecht. Servera med champagne. ”Skål för en gångs skull!”
”Lämnar du mig så skjuter jag dig.”
Den här dekadenta romanen med självbiografisk puls från 2001 handlar om en heterosexuell relation som jäser över, ruttnar och stinker. Ett konstnärligt och modigt verk är det, om galenskap, svartsjuka, backanal, våld och förnedring. Rakt in i mörkret leder hon mig och jag följer gladeligen med. Hon gestaltar väl och har en förtjusande besk och humoristisk ton men prosan tar hela tiden omtag vilket gör boken längre än nödvändigt.
”Han sover alltid på sidan för att inte dö spädbarnsdöden.”
Om bara verkligheten inte skilde sig så förbannat från sagans stora romantiska passion som är på liv och död. Om bara Ida kunde säga nej till något någon gång. Eller om bara två dysfunktionella människor kunde hela varandra istället för att dra ner varandra ytterligare. Om bara man slapp känna sig så jävla ensam och rädd. Om bara inte alkohol hjälpte så bra. Om bara kärleken och sexualiteten fungerade rationellt. Om bara någon kunde förklara när kärlekens ögonblick egentligen inträffade.
”Frånvaro kamouflerad till närvaro är hon bra på. Hon som kan uppleva kroppen helt skild från sig själv. Avtrubbad under akten. Tankarna tusen mil bort. Avskuren och onåbar.”
Jag är förtjust i allt jag läst av Hjorth, även den här. Jag rekommenderar den till dig som gillar Det kommer aldrig att vara du, Nora eller Brinn Oslo brinn eller Egenmäktigt förfarande.
”Lämnar du mig så skjuter jag dig.”
Den här dekadenta romanen med självbiografisk puls från 2001 handlar om en heterosexuell relation som jäser över, ruttnar och stinker. Ett konstnärligt och modigt verk är det, om galenskap, svartsjuka, backanal, våld och förnedring. Rakt in i mörkret leder hon mig och jag följer gladeligen med. Hon gestaltar väl och har en förtjusande besk och humoristisk ton men prosan tar hela tiden omtag vilket gör boken längre än nödvändigt.
”Han sover alltid på sidan för att inte dö spädbarnsdöden.”
Om bara verkligheten inte skilde sig så förbannat från sagans stora romantiska passion som är på liv och död. Om bara Ida kunde säga nej till något någon gång. Eller om bara två dysfunktionella människor kunde hela varandra istället för att dra ner varandra ytterligare. Om bara man slapp känna sig så jävla ensam och rädd. Om bara inte alkohol hjälpte så bra. Om bara kärleken och sexualiteten fungerade rationellt. Om bara någon kunde förklara när kärlekens ögonblick egentligen inträffade.
”Frånvaro kamouflerad till närvaro är hon bra på. Hon som kan uppleva kroppen helt skild från sig själv. Avtrubbad under akten. Tankarna tusen mil bort. Avskuren och onåbar.”
Jag är förtjust i allt jag läst av Hjorth, även den här. Jag rekommenderar den till dig som gillar Det kommer aldrig att vara du, Nora eller Brinn Oslo brinn eller Egenmäktigt förfarande.
November 15, 2024
In the beginning, I didn’t think I would finish this. I hated the main characters and couldn’t understand why Ida fell in love with Arnold in the first place and then obsessively wants to continue with the affair, no matter what. It’s strange how this worked, but I got drawn in by the language, the repetition (with slight variations) of phrases, the detailed rendering of obsessive thoughts, and by my astonishment and anger at this toxic, destructive relationship. Not a nice read, but a fascinating one nonetheless.
December 18, 2019
En strålende roman om at finde sin store kærlighed, sætte alt på spil for at få HAM for så derefter gradvist at erkende, men også fortrænge erkendelsen: At det ikke fungerer mellem dem. De krangler, de forsones, de elsker til det uudholdelige. "[M]å være kjedelig å lese," undskylder fortælleren sig selv henimod slutningen af bogen, men det bliver aldrig kedeligt at læse, tværtimod, den er lige så medrivende som en spændingsroman og er så absolut det bedste, jeg hidtil har læst af Hjorth.
August 13, 2025
i feel conflicted bc i loved a lot of this but parts of it felt repetitive and a little long for what it was
September 20, 2024
Absolutely incredible. This wrecked me. Hjorth has absolutely nailed the genesis, the duration, and the fiery end of a toxic and abusive relationship with the most precise of details. It’s a rigorous examination and every moment of it rings true.
Ida meets Arnold. Ida falls in love with Arnold. Arnold is married. Ida is married. An affair ensues. The highs are high. The lows are low. It's a tale as old as time, but Hjorth's rendering is anything but stale or hackneyed. From the start, I was hypnotized by the simple and addicting prose that continually sucked me in and spat me out breathless one hundred pages later. I was exhausted reading this and I mean that as the highest praise.
Ida and Arnold's relationship is all-encompassing. Their love is obsessive, co-dependent, and requires total sacrifice of the self. They morph into one, they isolate, and their trajectory is so predictable, but tragic all the same.
We all know someone like Ida, we all know someone like Arnold. We may have even resembled them at one point in our lives. Maybe not for as long and maybe not quite to this extent, but their characterizations are so real and so human, it’s what makes this so compelling.
As much as I absolutely loved this and it will be a top read of the year, it’s not one I would recommend widely and to just anyone. Book comparisons that come to mind are Erpenbeck’s Kairos, Ernaux’s Simple Passion, Patel’s I’m a Fan, and Nolan’s Acts of Desperation. If you could stomach those, then dive right in.
Ida meets Arnold. Ida falls in love with Arnold. Arnold is married. Ida is married. An affair ensues. The highs are high. The lows are low. It's a tale as old as time, but Hjorth's rendering is anything but stale or hackneyed. From the start, I was hypnotized by the simple and addicting prose that continually sucked me in and spat me out breathless one hundred pages later. I was exhausted reading this and I mean that as the highest praise.
Ida and Arnold's relationship is all-encompassing. Their love is obsessive, co-dependent, and requires total sacrifice of the self. They morph into one, they isolate, and their trajectory is so predictable, but tragic all the same.
We all know someone like Ida, we all know someone like Arnold. We may have even resembled them at one point in our lives. Maybe not for as long and maybe not quite to this extent, but their characterizations are so real and so human, it’s what makes this so compelling.
As much as I absolutely loved this and it will be a top read of the year, it’s not one I would recommend widely and to just anyone. Book comparisons that come to mind are Erpenbeck’s Kairos, Ernaux’s Simple Passion, Patel’s I’m a Fan, and Nolan’s Acts of Desperation. If you could stomach those, then dive right in.
August 25, 2024
Major thanks to NetGalley and Verso for offering me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts:
*3.75
If Ernaux wrote Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment on speed.
Hjorth lets intrusive thoughts win over female rage and depressed woman moving to create a desire-driven novel of fever dream questions that pulverize mental stability into insecure drivel that somehow forms a song so violent all you want is out of the novel.
My issue with Hjorth’s work is how cyclical her prose and themes move. Her thoughts and sentences chase each other in a dizzying whirlwind that it’s almost like getting a migraine from overthinking.
I’ve always been one for feel-bad books and this tops my feel-bad book of the year. It’s tough and no fun to get through, hitting a rush of relief by the end that it stuck the landing, stuck with me, and still, I am exhausted.
I don’t think I’ll recover because I’ve been here before. Imagine losing your first love, but it echoes in auditorium-eternity that it’s stitched into your DNA. It’s EHS with the pain. It’s the loss of losses, love at first loss.
*3.75
If Ernaux wrote Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment on speed.
Hjorth lets intrusive thoughts win over female rage and depressed woman moving to create a desire-driven novel of fever dream questions that pulverize mental stability into insecure drivel that somehow forms a song so violent all you want is out of the novel.
My issue with Hjorth’s work is how cyclical her prose and themes move. Her thoughts and sentences chase each other in a dizzying whirlwind that it’s almost like getting a migraine from overthinking.
I’ve always been one for feel-bad books and this tops my feel-bad book of the year. It’s tough and no fun to get through, hitting a rush of relief by the end that it stuck the landing, stuck with me, and still, I am exhausted.
I don’t think I’ll recover because I’ve been here before. Imagine losing your first love, but it echoes in auditorium-eternity that it’s stitched into your DNA. It’s EHS with the pain. It’s the loss of losses, love at first loss.
January 4, 2023
En roman om den stora kärleken, eller kanske besatthet, och dess uppgång och fall. Jag läser det som att det inte alltid är så att man passar ihop med sin stora kärlek. Smärtsamt destruktivt.
September 2, 2024
An intense story of romantic obsession. The narrator, Ida, is a married woman and a successful playwright who begins an affair with an older professor of German dramaturgy, Arnold, also married with children. Initially, when they meet at an academic conference, she is lukewarm about him but, as he sends her more and more letters in the mail, she becomes blindly enamored with him. She starts to count the days when she will see him next; she answers his letters in more voluminous detail; and when he doesn't respond to her or when she finds out that he is sleeping with other women, she becomes even more obsessed. She deludes herself with magical thinking, convincing herself their relationship is destiny—consulting an astrologist, checking the daily horoscopes, searching for omens. When she hears a poem on the radio, "The Wind and the Blue Sailor", she thinks it must have been requested by Arnold for her to hear, and when she finds a sailor figurine in a flea-market, she interprets it as another sign, steals it and mails it to him. He is her guardian sailor, she thinks to herself. But the affair becomes most tragic when she and Arnold finally end up together—when they leave their spouses to be together, they trap themselves in a downward spiral of self-destructive infatuation and vicious jealousy.
At the end of the novel, Arnold tells Ida, "You're a poor imitation of Tove Ditlevsen", and it feels like an apt description of the book itself. Like in Ditlevsen's Copenhagen Trilogy, in which Ditlevsen describes her abusive marriage and her descent into drug addiction, an unremitting cycle of short-lived rehabilitation and immediate relapse, Vigdis Hjorth's If Only is a similar story of an irrational and harmful affair that neither cannot break free from. Like a helpless addict, Ida swings between monomaniacal obsession and jealous rage. Even as their relationship ruins their families and their professional lives, even as he has affairs with other women and becomes hypocritically angry whenever she shows interest in other men, she can't help but become even more love-sick, moved by his show of vulnerability and envy. The relationship turns into an inescapable torment in which both his grand displays of love and his infidelities only endear him more to her.
The narrative feels flat overall, a repetitive series of affairs and heart-breaks: Ida and Arnold travel to Berlin or to Copenhagen, or rent a cabin in coastal Norway, they have more sex and more arguments, he refuses to write to her, she refuses to write to him, and then they become even more passionately in love. The places and the characters themselves never come into sharp focus. Ida's ex-husband and children make sporadic appearances and are only briefly described, and the reader never sees them as anything more than witnesses to Arnold's unstable behavior and Ida's deteriorating well-being. Even Arnold and Ida seem one-dimensional—her plays and his scholarship are only briefly mentioned, as if their mental lives and careers are secondary to the affair itself. Only their patchy relationship, an all-consuming obsession, is described, and in excruciatingly repetitive detail. After the first two hundred pages, the constant monomania turns into simple monotony. "It bores me already", she says at the end of the book, aware of how banal her obsession has been all along.
Hjorth's novel Is Mother Dead is also a story of obsession—a woman stalking her mother, desperately hoping to rebuild a relationship with her—but I found that a more compellingly plotted and suspenseful novel. If Only was too unrelenting and relished its own banality.
At the end of the novel, Arnold tells Ida, "You're a poor imitation of Tove Ditlevsen", and it feels like an apt description of the book itself. Like in Ditlevsen's Copenhagen Trilogy, in which Ditlevsen describes her abusive marriage and her descent into drug addiction, an unremitting cycle of short-lived rehabilitation and immediate relapse, Vigdis Hjorth's If Only is a similar story of an irrational and harmful affair that neither cannot break free from. Like a helpless addict, Ida swings between monomaniacal obsession and jealous rage. Even as their relationship ruins their families and their professional lives, even as he has affairs with other women and becomes hypocritically angry whenever she shows interest in other men, she can't help but become even more love-sick, moved by his show of vulnerability and envy. The relationship turns into an inescapable torment in which both his grand displays of love and his infidelities only endear him more to her.
The narrative feels flat overall, a repetitive series of affairs and heart-breaks: Ida and Arnold travel to Berlin or to Copenhagen, or rent a cabin in coastal Norway, they have more sex and more arguments, he refuses to write to her, she refuses to write to him, and then they become even more passionately in love. The places and the characters themselves never come into sharp focus. Ida's ex-husband and children make sporadic appearances and are only briefly described, and the reader never sees them as anything more than witnesses to Arnold's unstable behavior and Ida's deteriorating well-being. Even Arnold and Ida seem one-dimensional—her plays and his scholarship are only briefly mentioned, as if their mental lives and careers are secondary to the affair itself. Only their patchy relationship, an all-consuming obsession, is described, and in excruciatingly repetitive detail. After the first two hundred pages, the constant monomania turns into simple monotony. "It bores me already", she says at the end of the book, aware of how banal her obsession has been all along.
Hjorth's novel Is Mother Dead is also a story of obsession—a woman stalking her mother, desperately hoping to rebuild a relationship with her—but I found that a more compellingly plotted and suspenseful novel. If Only was too unrelenting and relished its own banality.
August 22, 2024
i fear this wasn’t the book for me! if only tells the extremely cursed “love” story between ida, writer of radio plays, and arnold, professor of german. they first meet when they are both married to other people and we follow their relationship throughout many long years.
i kept on reading thinking, “surely we’ll stop repeating ourselves at some point, things have to change.” but we just kept going over the same cycle of ida and arnold professing their love for each other over the phone, flying to meet up, getting drunk, having sex, getting in a huge fight over nothing, having sex again… rinse and repeat. while this repetition was really effective in showing how cyclical and never-ending toxic, abusive relationships can be… it didn’t make for a compelling read. there was no forward movement or character progression until the last 20 pages - the first 330, we were just spinning our wheels in the mud of the relationship. the characters fell really flat because their love for each other is all tell and no show - WHY are they so drawn to each other? what is the basis of them declaring their undying love for each other? what do they keep fighting and crying about? i had no reason to be invested in either ida or arnold’s lives.
i think i could forgive some of the repetitiveness if i had been blown away by the writing, but i wasn’t. once again, there was an improvement in the last 20 pages but not enough to redeem it. there were occasional passages that stood out to me as beautifully written, but not enough to cancel out the banality of the rest of it.
really disappointed because the synopsis sounded so promising to me due to the annie ernaux comparison. sure, hjorth and ernaux explore similar themes of passion, obsession, and forbidden love. but the reason why ernaux’s writing works so well is how precisely she’s able to express those feelings. her books being short makes them pack more of a punch, whereas if only’s 350 pages feel bloated. if it was edited down, i would’ve enjoyed it so much more.
thank you (and i’m sorry!) to netgalley and verso for the digital copy!
i kept on reading thinking, “surely we’ll stop repeating ourselves at some point, things have to change.” but we just kept going over the same cycle of ida and arnold professing their love for each other over the phone, flying to meet up, getting drunk, having sex, getting in a huge fight over nothing, having sex again… rinse and repeat. while this repetition was really effective in showing how cyclical and never-ending toxic, abusive relationships can be… it didn’t make for a compelling read. there was no forward movement or character progression until the last 20 pages - the first 330, we were just spinning our wheels in the mud of the relationship. the characters fell really flat because their love for each other is all tell and no show - WHY are they so drawn to each other? what is the basis of them declaring their undying love for each other? what do they keep fighting and crying about? i had no reason to be invested in either ida or arnold’s lives.
i think i could forgive some of the repetitiveness if i had been blown away by the writing, but i wasn’t. once again, there was an improvement in the last 20 pages but not enough to redeem it. there were occasional passages that stood out to me as beautifully written, but not enough to cancel out the banality of the rest of it.
really disappointed because the synopsis sounded so promising to me due to the annie ernaux comparison. sure, hjorth and ernaux explore similar themes of passion, obsession, and forbidden love. but the reason why ernaux’s writing works so well is how precisely she’s able to express those feelings. her books being short makes them pack more of a punch, whereas if only’s 350 pages feel bloated. if it was edited down, i would’ve enjoyed it so much more.
thank you (and i’m sorry!) to netgalley and verso for the digital copy!
November 24, 2022
Känner mig mörbultad.
Ingen kan sätta ord på Livet som Vigdis Hjorth.
Ingen kan sätta ord på Livet som Vigdis Hjorth.
October 24, 2024
A hyper realistic portrait of romantic obsession - relentless, repetitive, boring, cruel, crazy. I’m not sure you’re supposed to enjoy being on this rollercoaster.
August 28, 2025
I remain a Hjorth head, but definitely prefer her later novels to this, and would recommend those new to the Hjorth community start with Will and Testament, Long Live the Poshorn!, or A House in Norway.
November 18, 2024
A throughly gripping and original novel which drags us through Ida's infatuation with, and subsequent relationship with, the pompous, mediocre, philandering, narcissistic Brecht professor Arnold.
The first half of the book focuses on Ida's obsession, which reaches dizzying heights of delusional obsession for a person who seems clearly to be a very bad choice. Finally she wins her dubious prize and we ride a roller coaster with Ida as she navigates an insane relationship with Arnold, which includes idyllic vacations to numerous exotic locations on the globe as well frequent hedonistic indulgences in alcohol and sex, including a lurid tour through the world of underground sex clubs.
This novel is fascinating as a blow-by-blow description of the experience of being entangled with a toxic narcissist. Both humor and brutality abound in If Only, especially in the descriptions of Arnold's bad behavior as he becomes increasingly controlling, difficult, and childish, and the incredulous responses of Ida's friends and colleagues. But as awful as Arnold is, the parts in which Ida and Arnold are symbiotically happy together seem so rare, so incredible, so over-the-top, that you can't blame Ida for sticking with him; it's not her fault that he ends up being as shallow and worthless as he is.
Another thing that sets this novel apart is its psychological insight, provided in just the right amount and at the right times. The prose is deceptively simple, but lovely and well-constructed on a sentence and structural level. It gives you a feeling of being right there with Ida (or of actually being Ida), an emotionally devastating experience as you feel yourself unhinged, mad, obsessed, flinging yourself into an abyss, penetrated, destroyed, struck by violent and ecstatic blows.
I know many readers will say Ida is weak, but personally she reminded me of Medea, a fierce woman in love with a man who is too weak, mediocre, and conventional to handle her. Highly recommended.
The first half of the book focuses on Ida's obsession, which reaches dizzying heights of delusional obsession for a person who seems clearly to be a very bad choice. Finally she wins her dubious prize and we ride a roller coaster with Ida as she navigates an insane relationship with Arnold, which includes idyllic vacations to numerous exotic locations on the globe as well frequent hedonistic indulgences in alcohol and sex, including a lurid tour through the world of underground sex clubs.
This novel is fascinating as a blow-by-blow description of the experience of being entangled with a toxic narcissist. Both humor and brutality abound in If Only, especially in the descriptions of Arnold's bad behavior as he becomes increasingly controlling, difficult, and childish, and the incredulous responses of Ida's friends and colleagues. But as awful as Arnold is, the parts in which Ida and Arnold are symbiotically happy together seem so rare, so incredible, so over-the-top, that you can't blame Ida for sticking with him; it's not her fault that he ends up being as shallow and worthless as he is.
Another thing that sets this novel apart is its psychological insight, provided in just the right amount and at the right times. The prose is deceptively simple, but lovely and well-constructed on a sentence and structural level. It gives you a feeling of being right there with Ida (or of actually being Ida), an emotionally devastating experience as you feel yourself unhinged, mad, obsessed, flinging yourself into an abyss, penetrated, destroyed, struck by violent and ecstatic blows.
I know many readers will say Ida is weak, but personally she reminded me of Medea, a fierce woman in love with a man who is too weak, mediocre, and conventional to handle her. Highly recommended.
November 15, 2024
Wtf. The book "If Only" by Norwegian writer Vigdis Hjorth (belatedly published in English this fall, original Norwegian in 2001) left me mentally and physically EXHAUSTED. It's almost like I wish I hadn't read it, which is rare for me.
The premise was intriguing: a woman waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. Now, I think that any notion of a 'true self' is top notch bullshit but, yeah, I get it. Let's go with this.
In short: two people in their 30s in unfulfilling marriages enter an affair. While she's getting lost in this (and seeks a divorce from her meek husband), he's been there, done that, can handle it. For a while, at least.
This part of the book I kind of enjoyed and it was a bit like Annie Ernaux's 'Getting Lost' but not nearly as great (nothing is).
The cruel world of difficult and essentially unrequited love aka obsessing over an asshole - if the dude was truly available, it would be a boring descent into the passive aggressive status quo of domesticated relationships (the kind of couples I love to observe on holidays, 24/7 quiet but restless disappointment, but nothing I'd like to read a book about. Literature has nothing to add to this abyssal tragedy of two, the lesser love "the great love disappears, the lesser love stays". And I am not watching these couples with malice as much as admiration: wow, wow, wow! THIS is what you chose as your one short life in the name of 'love' (aka loyalty, responsibility, resignation, sacrifice, selfishness, conviction, cowardice, fear, pity, greed, pride, guilt, hope and strength).
Anyway, in an unexpected turn of events, after years of the woman's agony, the guy also leaves his wife and these two enter the worst, most fucked up and toxic relationship, full of jealousy and insecurities, resulting in violence and addiction. Going from bad to worse over 250 fucking long pages.
I do love the idea of unrequited love in literature, which is sort of romantic, but I didn't sign up for this pointless toxic hell of a relationship. Imagine this one friend who's stuck in a toxic relationship and where it's plain obvious to anyone except these two that this relationship needs to end, immediately and you have to listen to the details of this toxic bs for hours on end until you're fully exhausted and basically concluding the only thing there is: leave this relationship! ASAP! So this is what reading this book felt like, no development, no revelation just two fucked up people who created their own version of a very destructive hell. TMI!
Side note: What annoyed me also is that the guy is a pale, skinny bald dude who's ten years older than her and a professor for German literature, specialized in Brecht. Named his son Bertolt. What a lurch.
At least in Annie Ernaux's book it's a younger, hot Soviet apparatchik (Russian expat in Paris), somewhat justifying all the madness. I guess if you have to destroy half your life for a dude, he better be hot 🔥
The premise was intriguing: a woman waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. Now, I think that any notion of a 'true self' is top notch bullshit but, yeah, I get it. Let's go with this.
In short: two people in their 30s in unfulfilling marriages enter an affair. While she's getting lost in this (and seeks a divorce from her meek husband), he's been there, done that, can handle it. For a while, at least.
This part of the book I kind of enjoyed and it was a bit like Annie Ernaux's 'Getting Lost' but not nearly as great (nothing is).
The cruel world of difficult and essentially unrequited love aka obsessing over an asshole - if the dude was truly available, it would be a boring descent into the passive aggressive status quo of domesticated relationships (the kind of couples I love to observe on holidays, 24/7 quiet but restless disappointment, but nothing I'd like to read a book about. Literature has nothing to add to this abyssal tragedy of two, the lesser love "the great love disappears, the lesser love stays". And I am not watching these couples with malice as much as admiration: wow, wow, wow! THIS is what you chose as your one short life in the name of 'love' (aka loyalty, responsibility, resignation, sacrifice, selfishness, conviction, cowardice, fear, pity, greed, pride, guilt, hope and strength).
Anyway, in an unexpected turn of events, after years of the woman's agony, the guy also leaves his wife and these two enter the worst, most fucked up and toxic relationship, full of jealousy and insecurities, resulting in violence and addiction. Going from bad to worse over 250 fucking long pages.
I do love the idea of unrequited love in literature, which is sort of romantic, but I didn't sign up for this pointless toxic hell of a relationship. Imagine this one friend who's stuck in a toxic relationship and where it's plain obvious to anyone except these two that this relationship needs to end, immediately and you have to listen to the details of this toxic bs for hours on end until you're fully exhausted and basically concluding the only thing there is: leave this relationship! ASAP! So this is what reading this book felt like, no development, no revelation just two fucked up people who created their own version of a very destructive hell. TMI!
Side note: What annoyed me also is that the guy is a pale, skinny bald dude who's ten years older than her and a professor for German literature, specialized in Brecht. Named his son Bertolt. What a lurch.
At least in Annie Ernaux's book it's a younger, hot Soviet apparatchik (Russian expat in Paris), somewhat justifying all the madness. I guess if you have to destroy half your life for a dude, he better be hot 🔥
March 5, 2022
Jeg likte den første halvdelen av boken veldig godt. Egentlig ville jeg nok ha foretrukket en bok hvor Ida og Arnold aldri ble sammen, hvor tematikken holdt seg til å omfavne hvordan hun ville håndtert/ikke håndtert det.
Gjennom hele beskrivelsen av deres forhold følte jeg meg nærmest slukt og tygget på og spyttet ut igjen i et ekstremt høyt tempo. Det er en form for rå intensitet i følelsene og historien, som jeg gjenkjenner fra de andre bøkene jeg har lest av Hjorth, og som jeg tidligere har likt men som her kanskje akkurat vippet litt for mye ut av balanse for meg, akkurat nå. Det blir så ubehagelig at det nesten ikke er til å orke, og det er jo nettopp noe av det som kjennetegner hele denne relasjonen som beskrives. Den sterke ambivalensen mellom en lengsel som aldri er mulig å tilfredsstille helt, og hvor mye det koster å bære og være i så intense følelser som ytterligere forsterkes, ved forsøkene på å fylle det tomrommet som aldri kan fylles nok. En fryktelig ufiltrert levende roman. Jeg skjønner godt hvorfor denne har blitt kåret som en viktig roman, og også som et hurtigtig.
Gjennom hele beskrivelsen av deres forhold følte jeg meg nærmest slukt og tygget på og spyttet ut igjen i et ekstremt høyt tempo. Det er en form for rå intensitet i følelsene og historien, som jeg gjenkjenner fra de andre bøkene jeg har lest av Hjorth, og som jeg tidligere har likt men som her kanskje akkurat vippet litt for mye ut av balanse for meg, akkurat nå. Det blir så ubehagelig at det nesten ikke er til å orke, og det er jo nettopp noe av det som kjennetegner hele denne relasjonen som beskrives. Den sterke ambivalensen mellom en lengsel som aldri er mulig å tilfredsstille helt, og hvor mye det koster å bære og være i så intense følelser som ytterligere forsterkes, ved forsøkene på å fylle det tomrommet som aldri kan fylles nok. En fryktelig ufiltrert levende roman. Jeg skjønner godt hvorfor denne har blitt kåret som en viktig roman, og også som et hurtigtig.
January 9, 2023
Läste grimaserandes med armarna utsträckta.
July 21, 2025
all this for a bald man……
it’s an exhausting read. i skimmed some other reviews saying that they thought it was exhausting, and while reading the first third, i thought, “weaklings! these goodreads people do not know the true meaning of longing!!!!””
but as the book continues, i thought, oh, no, this IS truly exhausting. phrases, sentiments, specific wording, thoughts keep repeating throughout, and the same five things happen over and over and over again. ida and arnold are addicted to a poisonous, draining cycle, and YOU feel exhausted because ida is exhausted, you feel trapped because she is trapped, you are in torment because she is in torment. it works, i think! and you want to say “get a grip, girl!!!” but also you recognize yourself in her sometimes (at least i do! lol)—the book is not afraid of the nakedness of shame, of pain, of the suffering behind codependency.
it’s an exhausting read. i skimmed some other reviews saying that they thought it was exhausting, and while reading the first third, i thought, “weaklings! these goodreads people do not know the true meaning of longing!!!!””
but as the book continues, i thought, oh, no, this IS truly exhausting. phrases, sentiments, specific wording, thoughts keep repeating throughout, and the same five things happen over and over and over again. ida and arnold are addicted to a poisonous, draining cycle, and YOU feel exhausted because ida is exhausted, you feel trapped because she is trapped, you are in torment because she is in torment. it works, i think! and you want to say “get a grip, girl!!!” but also you recognize yourself in her sometimes (at least i do! lol)—the book is not afraid of the nakedness of shame, of pain, of the suffering behind codependency.
August 24, 2025
Wow wow wow.
I don’t know what else to say.
So colourful, vivid, textured. A gory autopsy of a relationship defined by obsession and a couple of not well adjusted individuals seeing what it’s like to skip out on an ordinary day to day life, and instead have beer and skittles for every meal and sleep in a race car bed. As you can imagine, this isn’t a sustainable approach to a life well lived, but which we as the reader get to observe with a sickly, queasiness.
Brilliant.
I don’t know what else to say.
So colourful, vivid, textured. A gory autopsy of a relationship defined by obsession and a couple of not well adjusted individuals seeing what it’s like to skip out on an ordinary day to day life, and instead have beer and skittles for every meal and sleep in a race car bed. As you can imagine, this isn’t a sustainable approach to a life well lived, but which we as the reader get to observe with a sickly, queasiness.
Brilliant.
September 9, 2024
“Their tragedy wasn’t that they didn’t get to be together, it was that they did.”
The tragedy is the readers’ as well. For the first half of the book, this portrayal of love addiction and obsession was the most shattering I’ve ever seen. It took my breath away.
Ida is a woman in her early 30s, married with two children, who writes radio plays and edits a magazine in Norway. At an out-of-town seminar, she meets Arnold Bush, who is also married, a Brecht translator, who ends up in her bed that night. He is unremarkable: slight and balding, not exactly a giving or trustworthy personality. Yet Ida imprints on him. She can’t get him out of her mind.
She relentlessly pursues Arnold who gives her the bare minimum to sustain her belief there is something between us. That little bit is enough: she divorces her husband, is careless with her children, and is obsessed with seeing him, spending time with him, speaking to him. In the first three years, she sees him exactly seven times and during those times, makes it evident that she is dying to be together with him.
It is pure obsession (and if I were Arnold, I would have run for the hills). She thinks,” Don’t take this away, the only thing that matters, without this pounding in my heart, this all-consuming nothing, I will be numb, life is meaningless, what will I think about then, what will I wait for, what will I replace it with?” In her lucid days, she wonders, “Is this infatuation, the strongest she has experienced, about Arnold Bush, or whether she needed to be in love, needed the strength which being in love gave her to do what was necessary, to divorce.”
Had the book stopped here, I would have been completely satisfied. But it doesn’t. Arnold, too, is addicted, maybe not to Ida, but to savagery and passion. He and his much younger wife split up. Now he is with Ida, and the relationship becomes right out of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – controlling, manipulative, all-encompassing, boundary-less, and need I add, unhealthy?
They sleep with each other. They sleep with other people. They sleep with a crowd. They rage. They howl. They cry. Her kids hate him. Her colleagues think she’s lost her mind. She begins to believe, “Suffering is a link that brings the magical pleasure happiness can never deliver.”
The characters are unlikeable. I couldn’t care less because unlikeable characters, to me, are usually more intriguing than “likable” ones. I have no idea how to rate this one. The writing is powerful but in my heart of hearts, I wish that the second half was edited down. If only.
The tragedy is the readers’ as well. For the first half of the book, this portrayal of love addiction and obsession was the most shattering I’ve ever seen. It took my breath away.
Ida is a woman in her early 30s, married with two children, who writes radio plays and edits a magazine in Norway. At an out-of-town seminar, she meets Arnold Bush, who is also married, a Brecht translator, who ends up in her bed that night. He is unremarkable: slight and balding, not exactly a giving or trustworthy personality. Yet Ida imprints on him. She can’t get him out of her mind.
She relentlessly pursues Arnold who gives her the bare minimum to sustain her belief there is something between us. That little bit is enough: she divorces her husband, is careless with her children, and is obsessed with seeing him, spending time with him, speaking to him. In the first three years, she sees him exactly seven times and during those times, makes it evident that she is dying to be together with him.
It is pure obsession (and if I were Arnold, I would have run for the hills). She thinks,” Don’t take this away, the only thing that matters, without this pounding in my heart, this all-consuming nothing, I will be numb, life is meaningless, what will I think about then, what will I wait for, what will I replace it with?” In her lucid days, she wonders, “Is this infatuation, the strongest she has experienced, about Arnold Bush, or whether she needed to be in love, needed the strength which being in love gave her to do what was necessary, to divorce.”
Had the book stopped here, I would have been completely satisfied. But it doesn’t. Arnold, too, is addicted, maybe not to Ida, but to savagery and passion. He and his much younger wife split up. Now he is with Ida, and the relationship becomes right out of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – controlling, manipulative, all-encompassing, boundary-less, and need I add, unhealthy?
They sleep with each other. They sleep with other people. They sleep with a crowd. They rage. They howl. They cry. Her kids hate him. Her colleagues think she’s lost her mind. She begins to believe, “Suffering is a link that brings the magical pleasure happiness can never deliver.”
The characters are unlikeable. I couldn’t care less because unlikeable characters, to me, are usually more intriguing than “likable” ones. I have no idea how to rate this one. The writing is powerful but in my heart of hearts, I wish that the second half was edited down. If only.
January 7, 2023
Åh hvor jeg føler mig hvirvlet tilbage til at være 22 og håbløst forelsket i ældre, fraværende mænd. Hér dog, gennem det spøjst blik af en gift mor til to. Denne bog haster, på den gode måde! Den har en rå stil, som man vænner sig hurtigt til, og vil have mere af. Genkendelig, sjov og måske endda lidt af et mesterværk - på samme måde at David Foster Wallaces ‘The Depressed Person’ er et mesterværk: Den sætter det håbeløse og ængstelige ved mennesker på spil, det gør ondt at læse, men er også fascinerende, og så detaljeret observeret. Den efterlader mig med så mange spørgsmål om de to hovedpersoner og deres adfærdsmønstre og deres barndom, men jeg er glad for, at de spørgsmål ikke bliver besvarede i bogen - for så har jeg plads til at tænke over mine egne mønstre og deres mystiske oprindelse.
September 5, 2025
As described, the novel indeed asks can passion be mistaken for love? But it also asks, can a reader sustain attention for 350 pages on shallow, histrionic characters?
If Only follows Ida's obsession with Arnold, her on-and-off-again lover while they both harm each other as well as other partners and friends who stand in their way. Ida believes their romance is destined, but keeps failing to see the person Arnold really is despite his obvious character flaws. As a whole, this story explores the relationship between romance and freedom.
Hjorth has sharp lines and strong dialog, but ultimately failed in cultivating any reason to care about the character(s).
Thanks Verso & NetGalley for the e-arc.
If Only follows Ida's obsession with Arnold, her on-and-off-again lover while they both harm each other as well as other partners and friends who stand in their way. Ida believes their romance is destined, but keeps failing to see the person Arnold really is despite his obvious character flaws. As a whole, this story explores the relationship between romance and freedom.
Hjorth has sharp lines and strong dialog, but ultimately failed in cultivating any reason to care about the character(s).
Thanks Verso & NetGalley for the e-arc.
January 5, 2025
I think this should not have been the first Vigdis Hjorth book I read. I think if you’ve never dated an extremely mid man and been manipulated into a frenzy you believe is love, this could be compelling. But if you’ve lived through it, you know almost from page 1 that this is a doomed affair and the thrill thus lies in hoping bad things happen to both characters. Spoiler, someone tells Arnold to shut up near the end of the book and that was a delight.
Read
May 10, 2023Dnf ved 45%
Kvinder der opgiver alt for en mand, der ikke helt kan huske hvad hun hedder, fordi han har så mange sidechicks.
No thank you
Kvinder der opgiver alt for en mand, der ikke helt kan huske hvad hun hedder, fordi han har så mange sidechicks.
No thank you
August 8, 2025
The prose is written to mimic the obsessive insular interiority of a woman utterly mad in love. It's quite suffocating and, at times, extremely ridiculous. The protagonist is as addicted to her man as she is to the humiliation he causes her. A martyr of love and longing. The run-on auto-fictional quality of this book turned me off at times, but I have to admit that Hjorth captures the thought processes of a woman in this situation with incredible verisimilitude. She is quite a skilled writer, especially considering this is her first novel. I'm more excited to read Will and Testament now.
It's a novel in the lineage of Ernaux who frequently writes about passionate affairs doomed from the beginning. But Ernaux has a French insouciance that Hjorth avoids completely. This is a novel of desperation and humiliation in the service of love, even if the lover rejects what one is offering, being unable to take no for an answer in hope of a millisecond of tenderness or indignation - it doesn’t matter. It reminded me of the Lacan quote: "Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it." This fundamental incompleteness at the heart of being a subject and being in love is elaborated to an absurd degree here. The protagonist neglects her already failing marriage, her children, her life for this man, with the possible exception of her work as a playwright but only because it helps with her art. She is the artist and Arnold, her prized objet a, is the critic (both in their careers and in their relationship, as he works as a Brechtian scholar who critiques contemporary theatre and she writes radio plays). She wants to become true and whole through a great love, a desire she harboured even before meeting Arnold.
The themes and style are very similar to some recent auto-fictional novels: Kairos by Erpenbeck (minus the historical backdrop which plays a big part in Kairos - the collapse of GDR mirrors the lovers relationship) and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan, both of which I enjoyed a lot. But Hjorth's version (she wrote it in 2001) is much much more virulent, like a disease rotting its host from within. Yet the seduction of great love still persists just as strongly. I can't help but think of this as a fundamentally feminine novel, in its poisonous, infectious, and extremely dark need for love and devotion, to the point of destruction. The result ends up being a relationship consisting of violence, hedonism, helplessness, and degradation.
“You can be aware of your capacity for love before you meet your beloved. Sense your potential for passion before you experience passion itself. You can know it as a child, as a latent possibility: I am able to love deeply. Even if you never meet him, you still comprehend something about love. The spirit sleeps in stones, it slumbers in plants. It awakens in animals, she is about to become an animal.”
“Because she can’t write to him, she writes to others. She sits on stones in the forest and writes because she has no opportunity to respond to his love anywhere but in her thoughts, she responds to it via other people, her husband, other men, whispering pent-up words into the ears of others with such passion that they blush and some whisper back words they have rehearsed long ago, intended for women other than her, pressing their bodies against hers, there is so much unrequited love, so many unhappy people who yearn, who will never end up together, so many who love in secret.”
“If only there was a cure, a cure for love. Did he open up an old wound so that the infection could pour out, be released at last, so that the wound could be cleaned, rinsed repeatedly with disinfectant, with stinging fluid, right down to the bloody, open sore, the pus drained, no matter how much it hurt so that love could finally die? Because love dies like books die, they are created and live their lives, short or long, and then they die as all living things must die; doomed to die because without death, there is no life and without death, no love either.”
“She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death.”
“They show each other how they masturbate. They tell each other how they were with other people, what they did and how they did it with other people. They tell each other their fantasies and they live them out. They read porn magazines and do the things described in them. They use kitchen utensils and carrots, French batons which slowly go soggy. They might go to bed with a toolbox, they drink and urinate on each other and cause havoc and are scared to go down to the hotel lobby in case anyone has heard how they yelled and hit each other and went mental all night. In Paris she dances in the street while he plays his accordion and people drop money in Arnold’s Stetson, they make 300 francs in a few hours that night, they are drunk, of course.”
"Don't take this away, the only thing that matters, without this pounding in my heart, this all-consuming nothing, I will be numb, life is meaningless, what will I think about then, what will I wait for, what will I replace it with?"
"Their tragedy wasn't that they didn't get to he together, it was that they did."
It's a novel in the lineage of Ernaux who frequently writes about passionate affairs doomed from the beginning. But Ernaux has a French insouciance that Hjorth avoids completely. This is a novel of desperation and humiliation in the service of love, even if the lover rejects what one is offering, being unable to take no for an answer in hope of a millisecond of tenderness or indignation - it doesn’t matter. It reminded me of the Lacan quote: "Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it." This fundamental incompleteness at the heart of being a subject and being in love is elaborated to an absurd degree here. The protagonist neglects her already failing marriage, her children, her life for this man, with the possible exception of her work as a playwright but only because it helps with her art. She is the artist and Arnold, her prized objet a, is the critic (both in their careers and in their relationship, as he works as a Brechtian scholar who critiques contemporary theatre and she writes radio plays). She wants to become true and whole through a great love, a desire she harboured even before meeting Arnold.
The themes and style are very similar to some recent auto-fictional novels: Kairos by Erpenbeck (minus the historical backdrop which plays a big part in Kairos - the collapse of GDR mirrors the lovers relationship) and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan, both of which I enjoyed a lot. But Hjorth's version (she wrote it in 2001) is much much more virulent, like a disease rotting its host from within. Yet the seduction of great love still persists just as strongly. I can't help but think of this as a fundamentally feminine novel, in its poisonous, infectious, and extremely dark need for love and devotion, to the point of destruction. The result ends up being a relationship consisting of violence, hedonism, helplessness, and degradation.
“You can be aware of your capacity for love before you meet your beloved. Sense your potential for passion before you experience passion itself. You can know it as a child, as a latent possibility: I am able to love deeply. Even if you never meet him, you still comprehend something about love. The spirit sleeps in stones, it slumbers in plants. It awakens in animals, she is about to become an animal.”
“Because she can’t write to him, she writes to others. She sits on stones in the forest and writes because she has no opportunity to respond to his love anywhere but in her thoughts, she responds to it via other people, her husband, other men, whispering pent-up words into the ears of others with such passion that they blush and some whisper back words they have rehearsed long ago, intended for women other than her, pressing their bodies against hers, there is so much unrequited love, so many unhappy people who yearn, who will never end up together, so many who love in secret.”
“If only there was a cure, a cure for love. Did he open up an old wound so that the infection could pour out, be released at last, so that the wound could be cleaned, rinsed repeatedly with disinfectant, with stinging fluid, right down to the bloody, open sore, the pus drained, no matter how much it hurt so that love could finally die? Because love dies like books die, they are created and live their lives, short or long, and then they die as all living things must die; doomed to die because without death, there is no life and without death, no love either.”
“She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death.”
“They show each other how they masturbate. They tell each other how they were with other people, what they did and how they did it with other people. They tell each other their fantasies and they live them out. They read porn magazines and do the things described in them. They use kitchen utensils and carrots, French batons which slowly go soggy. They might go to bed with a toolbox, they drink and urinate on each other and cause havoc and are scared to go down to the hotel lobby in case anyone has heard how they yelled and hit each other and went mental all night. In Paris she dances in the street while he plays his accordion and people drop money in Arnold’s Stetson, they make 300 francs in a few hours that night, they are drunk, of course.”
"Don't take this away, the only thing that matters, without this pounding in my heart, this all-consuming nothing, I will be numb, life is meaningless, what will I think about then, what will I wait for, what will I replace it with?"
"Their tragedy wasn't that they didn't get to he together, it was that they did."
July 5, 2024
4 stjerner ⭐️ Denne boken var en intens opplevelse! Jeg ble sugd inn i den lidenskapelige affæren mellom hovedpersonene, og makan til drama og lidenskap! Hjorth har klart å fange den desperate, stygg-vakre følelsen av en destruktiv forelskelse på en mesterlig måte. Jeg hadde nesten glemt hvor godt hun skriver og hvor mye jeg liker bøkene hennes. Hjorths skildring av menneskelige følelser og relasjoner er både rørende og skremmende realistisk. Dette er en bok som både river og rører ved hjertet.
August 14, 2023
Påminner mycket om Anderssons Egenmäktigt Förfarande, men är mer brutal. Roligt med tidsmarkörerna - de skickas brev och inväntas otåligt på svar vid brevlådan, det springs till telefonkiosken för att ringa osv. Det var krångligare att vara besatta av någon i slutet på 90-talet…
August 5, 2024
Jag älskade den??
Displaying 1 - 30 of 311 reviews