Vigdis Hjorth is so great at writing about obsession, and this novel is no different. It is almost difficult to be inside someone's mind who can only think about the object of their obsession, especially when I feel like they don't deserve it. The reason why I didn't enjoy this novel as much as "Is Mother Dead" is because it felt abut 30% longer than it could have been to the same effect. I loved "A Simple Passion" by Annie Ernaux which is why I was excited to read this, but this was to much like a longer version of that for me. It was well-written and I wanted to see how it ended, and I did find the ending satisfying. If you are looking for inspiration to decenter men in your life, I would recommend this. I look forward to seeing what Hjorth comes out with next!

To read this book to completion, you’ll need a high tolerance for odious characters who make frustrating decisions and actions. This perhaps could have been shorter, or maybe the drag felt more apparent due to the lack of chapters. The translation is well done and easy to read, it’s the plot that gets you!

Thank you NetGalley and Verso Books for the ARC.

I can't believe this was written by a woman. 300+ pages of a (seemingly) put together, intelligent, artsy, beautiful woman obsessed with a very mediocre man. There's books that you wished you liked, books you can accept others enjoy and then there are books like this. Books that are bad, that celebrate toxic, abusive love. Lame.

If Only tells the story of a woman who desperately seeks a sense of self and belonging through passion, which she may or may not mistake for falling in love. The only alternative for her, which generates a profound sense of doom, is her death. Overall, this was a meditative story on how we try (and fail) to be with ourselves.

I can’t quite say that I enjoyed this novel and I found the momentum of it rather heavy going, however it is a novel that has stayed with me in its detailing of the minutiae of obsession. I think my trouble was that as the narrative drew on and on and it all became more and more unhappy the banality of the situation crept it. I think it would have worked excellently as a short novella but the narrative length of this weakened rather that strengthened it.

Not for the faint-hearted, and I can quite see why some readers have hated it. But I found it strangely – and disturbingly – compelling as we watch a toxic relationship between Ida, a writer, and Arnold, a professor, ascend to the heights and descend into madness. A story of obsession and gaslighting, too much alcohol and co-dependency, and very little about love, even though the two constantly refer to their great and overwhelming love. Reading the book is like watching a car crash in slow motion. You want to step in and halt it, but instead have to continue watching the relationship implode. The affair is described in granular detail and the reader is forced to wince at many of the scenes. And yet I couldn’t stop myself being totally drawn into what must be the worst self-destructive relationship imaginable. Formidable writing transcends the deeply troubling narrative.

I am so thankful to Verso Books, Vigdis Hjorth, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this galley before publication day. I really enjoyed the dialogue and plot of this book and can’t wait to chat this one up with my friends!

I loved this book and was enthralled with the writing. I loved the character study. Would read more from the author!

This book dives into a chaotic, toxic relationship, packed with jealousy, madness, and violence. The author takes you deep into the darkness, and I couldn't stop reading. The tone is sharp and a bit sarcastic, but the writing tends to repeat itself and feels longer than it needs to be. It highlights how love and reality clash, and how messed up people drag each other down. You can't help but wonder—why can’t they heal each other instead? And why does alcohol seem to help so much?

This was fine but not really what I was in the mood.for at the time. But the cover is super cool and I do love that.

One of the great things about book prizes is that they can highlight authors’ work that you may not otherwise have come across. That was exactly what happened for me when the International Booker longlisted Norwegian writer Vigdis Hjorth’s Is Mother Dead? in 2023.

I didn’t get on with Is Mother Dead? at first but I stuck with it and when it clicked, I was all in. It prompted me to seek out Will and Testament, the book which caused the rift in Hjorth’s family that led to her writing Is Mother Dead? I listened to it on audio which I highly recommend. found both of these books to be suffocating reads, locked inside someone’s tortured mind. Hjorth’s skill at creating this feeling and Barslund’s translation had me marveling at the way the prose pulled me in and would not let me go.

So, when I saw that Hjorth’s 2001 book If Only was coming out in translation (by Barslund again), I knew I had to read it. It didn’t disappoint.

In If Only, we meet Ida, married with two children, she’s living an uneventful life until she meets Arnold. She’s immediately drawn to this older married man to the point of obsession. He initially seems to be more ambivalent or at least more in control, but eventually, they’re both swirling around each other in an intense, physical relationship.

As is perhaps unsurprising, the path from infatuation to obsession often leads to a bad third place, toxicity, a destination filled with deceit, gaslighting, and violence. As a reader, it feels much like listening to a friend or coworker describing a bad relationship with issues that they themselves are blind to but that you can easily see from the outside looking in. I found myself compulsively following along, but also needing to take breaks.

Even though the original book is over twenty years old, you can see the germ of the kind of writing in Hjorth’s more recent works Will and Testament and Is Mother Dead? While fairly conventional at the beginning, as we hurtle recklessly towards the end of If Only, the prose gets looser, less conventional and, to my mind, more interesting.

Hjorth can write a hurt, damaged heart and mind so well. Claustrophobic, intense, and at times difficult, If Only is a powerful warning about how unequal and unhealthy relationships can turn toxic and abusive. This topic never makes for enjoyable reading but, as with Jenny Erpenbeck’s International Booker winner Kairos, Hjorth’s skill carries the reader through. It will be interesting to see whether If Only makes the International Booker longlist in March.

This book was too much for me, it was extremely hard to get through and finish it, and the ending was not even worth it. The main character is creepy and obsessed, she was too much. The book was far too repetitive for my taste, it was making me angry having the same things happen over and over and over.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

I unfortunately honestly could not stomach this one. Came for the Annie Ernaux comparison, left after about 200 pages of vague repetition.

Ida has found her true love—if only Arnold would realize it. She writes letters and makes phone calls, and they meet up to have sex and drink beer, and then she goes back to her husband and he goes back to his wife and she writes more letters and makes more phone calls and dreams of the dizzying possibility of being with Arnold forever. She can't sleep can't eat can't stop talking about Arnold can't understand why he pushes her away can't imagine a life without him.

And then the relationship changes, and things get interesting.

It took me far longer than I expected to read the first half or so of the book—Ida's obsession and desperation are hard to bear. She is so ready to throw away almost everything in her life; not her children, perhaps, but they are relegated to "the children" throughout the book, with no need for names or personalities or dialogue. It is Arnold, Arnold, always Arnold.

When the dynamics shift, we see even more how...well...worthless Arnold is. Boorish and beery, paranoid and jealous and self-centered. Ida sees this too, sometimes; she mollifies and apologizes and changes her behavior and loses sleep and says "yes, yes, yes". She forgets what "no" is, forgets that she once had worth outside this obsessive, codependent, toxic spiral the two of them find themselves in. (Part of me thinks "get out, get out, good grief, Ida, take a look around you" and part of me thinks "well, they deserve each other". Mostly the former, to be fair, but the latter is persistent.)

It's not a pleasant read, and frankly I understand why reviews are so polarized—their dysfunction goes on and on, always unraveling but never quite far enough for respite. I ultimately decided to find it fascinating in that can't-look-away kind of way, but you absolutely have to be in the frame of mind to read about a toxic relationship (one reason it took me so long to finish the book) to find satisfaction here. I'm curious to know what Norwegian critics made of the book when it was first released in 2001.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

This was a DNF for me and God help me I really tried. I got past the 100 page mark but after the narrator started her obsession again I just couldn't take 200 more pages of this.

There clearly is an audience for books like this. Reminds me of the work of other great writers like Days of Abandonment or Simple Passion but I just do not care for books about women losing their minds over men they don't even really seem to like or care about.

If Only was originally published in Norwegian in 2001, but it could have just as easily been written this year. The themes that Hjorth tackles feel just as relevant today as they were 23 years ago.

In If Only, we are introduced to the toxic relationship between Ida, a writer of radio plays, and Arnold, a German professor. What starts as a a one-sided obsession evolves into a full-blown affair and then terrible relationship. Just when you think it could not get much worse, it does. And then it does again. Honestly, both of these characters are terrible. You are meant to feel for Ida, but it is hard to empathize with her as she continues to make one bad choice after another.

This book is not for the faint of heart. If the toxic relationship in Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos was hard for you to read, I'd stay away from this one... Compared to Ernaux's A Simple Passion (which I coincidentally read shortly before picking up If Only), this book takes toxicity to the extreme.

And yet...I really enjoyed this book, though "enjoyed" is maybe not quite the word. I was drawn into Ida and Arnold's orbit and couldn't look away even as their relationship became more and more upsetting. The book goes on a little too long and it becomes exhausting after awhile. But Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund, has a keen eye and way of writing about this couple kept me coming back. One of my favorite parts of the novel was her use of repetitions, sometimes events, sometimes phrases. They upend you, make you pause and ask "didn't I already read this?" and perfectly reflect the back and forth of Arnold and Ida's relationship. That said, I'll admit that I sped through the last 10% of the book because I honestly just needed them to be done and gone.

In sum, this is a difficult book and one I wouldn't recommend to everyone. But, if you liked books like Kairos and Liars by Sarah Manguso (and of course Ernaux), I'd add this to your list.

If only by Vigdis Hjorth is the story of women desperate for love.
This womens obsession over one man was disturbing. He treated her so badly I questioned if he actually enjoyed her madness.
This was my first Vigdis Hjorth novel and something must have been lost in translation because this was just ok. On to the next one!

After reading the blurb, I knew that this book was going to be for me. It’s weird it’s real and it’s messy and slightly unhinged. Everything that I love in a good literary fiction book. Thank you for the opportunity to review early will be singing from the rooftops about this book.

If Only follows the story of Ida, a writer, and Arnold, a professor of German, and their twisted, obsessive love story, starting while they were both married to other people. A brief fling at a conference leads to a years-long tumultuous and often abusive relationship, spanning their hometowns, and travels around.

This is a beautifully written and translated, if exceptionally frustrating, book. Which I realize is the point, and Hjorth portrays a toxic relationship with great accuracy, but the repetitive nature of their fights, the cheating, and then passionately declaring love for one another is grating. This is a story of anger and imbalance of power, as well as wanting something that’s terrible for you, which it successfully does, but it could have cut out a few loops of the cycle and still been effective.

I’ve read all of the translations of Hjorth’s novels that Verso has published, and she’s an author whose new releases I always anticipate. It was interesting to read this, one of her older novels, having read more recent works previously. The subject matter was quite different from the others, but the feeling of reading it really reminded me of Is Mother Dead - the sense of claustrophobia inhabiting the mind of someone so obsessive and bent on self-destruction. It’s really well done - the details and specificities of this relationship make it feel tangible, like a living nightmare. I think Is Mother Dead made more interesting interventions (thinking through duty and family, the role of art, and maintaining appearances), whereas I’m not sure I found new insights on marriage, relationships, or gender roles in this one. It’s a difficult and often frustrating read, as it requires the reader to bear witness to a woman persistently making very bad choices, but Hjorth’s angry prose style and mastery of psychological tension elevates it.