If Only, originally published in 2001 and only now translated into english by Charlotte Barslund is less a book I read and more an exercise in endurance I didn’t realize I had signed up for. Hjorth drops hints very early on, tiny red flags for me to collect over and over until my hands are not enough and I drop all the red flags and reach sobbing into my back pocket to wave a tiny white flag of surrender. The novel centers around Ida and Arnold, told from Ida’s perspective. Ida is in her 20s and spends two decades of her life obsessing over Arnold and his various needs and demands. There is a very telling line at the beginning of the novel, where Ida sits watching her younger self at a train station. She says, “I, your mature self, was many years away. At a railway station twenty years too late.” There are a few moments like this scattered throughout the book, moments where Ida speaks to the realization of a deeply suppressed common sense and sense of self. Hjorth writes in cyclical patterns figuratively and literally. Fights happen over and over again with small details changed, names changed, locations changed but they’re still happening over and over. The more Ida loses herself in her relationship -- or rather loses herself in relation to Arnold, the more she repeats statements over and over. It is as if the repetition of the various injuries and humiliations he has caused will finally cause her to leave. It never happens. Or rather, it happens very slowly. While reading If Only I kept asking myself why am I still reading this? I think a big part of it is that I’d never read a book about this sort of unraveling before, the only one that comes to mind as similar is Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. If Only is deeply unsettling, depressing, and enraging but also groundbreaking in the way that only the best novels are: Hjorth manages to excavate the ugliness of human experience without flinching while focusing on two deeply unlikeable and selfish people. Arnold, the balding professor who sleeps with his younger students and thinks his genius should be world renowned; and Ida, the imperfect victim who all but abandons her children, friends, and family to live two decades literally on her knees for Arnold. If Only is an emotionally excruciating read to get through. There were many points where I became physically nauseous and filled with the bile I had just read. But as Hjorth writes, nearing the end of this saga: I can’t do this anymore, she thinks. It has to end, she thinks. It can’t go on, I can’t live the rest of my life like this, she thinks. She thinks and she’s right. It ends.

Could not relate to these dislikeable characters and hated the stuttered, alternately diving deep then skimming the shallow waters prose. Seemed to be rushed but could sense there wasn't going to be much development as the novel works its course. Not for me - DNF'd at 6%.
This honest review is given with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book.

DNF at 15%

The writing style and tone is just not for me. Looking at other review, it doesn't seem like either will change if given more time so I am choosing to move on.

Whew!!!
….Catching my breath….
….This incredibly well written story exhausted and depleted my reserves….

“If Only” by Vigdis Hjorth, Norwegian author, has written a sensational ‘nails-on-a-chalkboard’ novel that is so provocative….(causing or eliciting a strong or passionate reaction) ….
of a story where readers will either react with a fight or flight response to the sensory
stimuli — similar to anxiety disorders ….
Some readers won’t make it to the end — they’ll bolt if the repetitive emotional pain, lust, love, obsession, intrigue, annoyance, intensity, becomes too exasperating, and just plain maddening!

That said…. I not only finished this novel (taking the endurance challenge)….but I also gave up primetime sleep to do so.

Like a devastating car crash that one can’t stop looking at …. (just a bit longer) …. “If Only” …. in all it’s obsessive, arousing, titillating, salacious, zestfulness …..
It’s also a story about a woman and man …. who are both ….
kinda….
bananas!
They both have a few screws loose…
However … the author does a brilliant job examining obsessive love fixation.
This ‘in-your-face’ novel isn’t a comfy read by any means …. but its writing is honest… leaving me with great respect for Vigdis Hjorth.
Hjorth’s talent is off-the-chart brilliant, creative, imaginative, and astute > at the highest level.

A few excerpts…
“You can be aware of your capacity for love before you meet your beloved. Sense your potential for passion before you experience passion itself”.

“She smiles and drinks her wine and he sits down next to her on the sofa and again he touches her cheek and then he kisses her. They undress, they have sex. He comes. He rolls onto his side and smiles:
I need a break, he says. They drink more wine. He calls her Kjersti once, but it doesn’t matter. He laughs as he says: You’re not supposed to do that, are you? He asks about her husband, about her marriage, she is honest. She is heading for a divorce. He for his part, says: I can’t handle another breakup”.

“If only it could have stayed this way. If only the state could be frozen and preserved forever, if only she could’ve gone through her life consumed by this imagined, love and then met him twenty years later”.

With great esteem, respect, admiration for such unique skills….I rate this book the full 5 stars!

P. S. The book cover is awesome!!!!

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.

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.

4.5 ⭐️

Thank you NetGalley and Verso Fiction for an ARC of this book!

“If Only” is a nuanced exploration of love. In some ways the narrative feels like the characters are just “coping” with love, when other moments they are able to access liminal emotions.

I WISH I had a physical copy of this book rather than just a digital because I was highlighting and writing notes every couple of paragraphs. This translation is so accessible and moving to the reader, i thoroughly enjoyed it.

This book is definitely worth a read if you are a fan of writers like Annie Ernaux. Hjorth and Ernaux both approach love and lust with a brutal honesty that I find so refreshing as a reader. I would recommend this book to those who have recently reflected on their own roles in relationships.

This book is heavily focused on obsession and longing within a romantic relationship. At times, the story dragged because of its repetitive nature of the main character going through the same toxic situations in the relationship. It feels like you are meant to be frustrated with Ida and I would say that was easy for me. Although I was irritated with the relationship, I still found myself intrigued with what was going to happen and if the relationship would finally end. Ultimately, I found the writing immerse and well done. I will be checking out the other works of Vidgis Hjorth.

Like LONG LIVE THE POST HORN, this novel upended me. Is there something achingly direct about the Norwegian language itself, when translated into English, that makes this author's prose seem simultaneously simple and deeply beautiful? Or is Vigdis Hjorth just incredibly in tune with the music of language, no matter what language her story is presented in? I was gripped by every sentence--even when nothing in particular was happening in any given sentence it gripped me. It felt so perfect. Each sentence flows seamlessly to the next and even in those passages when the story itself is upended by unruly emotions there is a presence,, a mastery, guiding me through. What a delight. Here is another book that reminds me why I read.

If Only is about a playwright, Ida, whose entire self is swallowed up by a passion for an unimpressive, scummy man named Arnold, a professor of some minor note who cheats on his much younger wife and sleeps with his students. The novel kicks off with Ida and Arnold having a night of unsatisfying sex after a conference, and the first half of the novel follows Ida as she develops a mostly-unrequited obsession with Arnold. She only cares about Arnold, only thinks about Arnold, only talks about Arnold, not even in terms of his qualities or his actual self so much as whether he returns her feelings, or whether he is sleeping with other women, or what his relationship with his wife is like. Eventually Arnold chooses to pursue a relationship with Ida and they fall into a miserable spiral of alcohol, screaming fights, mutual cheating, break ups and make ups, etc.

I enjoyed the prose, but I was exhausted by the obsessive smallness of Ida's consciousness, and how shallow her relationship with Arnold ultimately was, beyond the drama they manufactured themselves. Supporting characters appear but remain irrelevant; Ida and Arnold travel the world, but barely notice anything beyond their repetitive cycle of sex and fighting; there are brief references to Ida's plays, but no real sense of her creative and intellectual self, because these concerns are always subordinate to Arnold. I recognize that this is exactly what the novel is crafted to convey, so in that sense it is successful -- I just didn't enjoy it. A reader who is more interested in this kind of relationship may get much more out of the novel.

I'm so sorry Vigdis Hjorth I'm a big fan but this is so boring to me!!! A story of a bad relationship told well enough to make sense but not enough to make me care.

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 next see him; 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 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.

A novel about love and obsession. The prose was lovely but the relationship between Ida and Arthur was not gripping enough to sustain the reader’s attention.

I've read the three Hjorth novels that have been published in English, and I'm a fan. If Only was originally published in Norway in 2001 and links with Will and Testament, the Hjorth novel I read first a few years ago, about a woman estranged from her family after accusing her father of sexual abuse (which garnered great attention in Norway and indeed brought forth lots of articles about what constitutes auto-fiction, along with My Struggle by fellow Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard). This book - novel? autofiction? - alludes to, but does not delve in, as Will and Testament does, to the sexual abuse and the family estrangement and the narrator in that book is older, has been in therapy, etc. In this one, the main character and narrator, Ida, is 30, an editor and writer of radio plays, and we are limited to the information that she has not seen her family in some time, and perhaps, psychologically, the abuse that is not identified is an explanation, in whole or in part, for her obsession with 39-year-old professor and Brecht translator Arnold Bush, who is a father, married, and a serial cheater. It's a volatile obsession for Ida, this is what love is, she decides, and divorces her seemingly good and caring husband, throws herself into her love for Arthur, an inconstant man with his own deep-seated issues. It is some years before whatever they have, itself unhealthy, morphs into a decidedly unhealthy and neurotic relationship. Ida is trapped in that love for a man who is not worth it, traps herself in that unworthy love, and when the book opens it is years later, and she is writing about who she was then when she first met Arthur. It's a linear plot, we go through everything with Ida, and with Arthur, but it's also punctuated by forward flashes, by reflections, by messages between them, the letters they write, Ida's own summary of their relationship, as if she's writing it as a radio play. These years are periods of extreme emotion for Ida - her children cared for really only in between seeing Arthur - and she knows, reflects at times, that she is behaving crazily, insisting that she loves Arthur, no matter what he does, forcing herself, even, to hew to this new narrative about herself - that she has finally found love, that only with him can she experience what she is experiencing. Her friends are tired of hearing Arthur's name, as is her therapist, and she ends her sessions with him; later she will wonder if she should have instead increased her sessions with him from three times a week to four. It's a compelling book, although I also grew tired of their banal love affair, because that is what it is - banal, two people whose individual neuroses compel them towards each other, with love and sex and cheating used as means of control. 23 years have passed since this book was first published and the sad truth is that women still often make terrible decisions about love, about men, hang onto the construct despite all the pain. What gives a light throughout and at the end, is that Ida, despite all, still turns to writing and literature, to find her way out. Did I enjoy this book? Yes and no, the reader is in the position of a friend who has heard Ida's story for years, again and again, and can't understand why someone so bright would do this to herself.

Thanks to Verso Books and Netgalley for the ARC.

I absolutely love Vigdis Hjorth's writing. This is much more maximalist than the paired back language of Is Mother Dead, but nonetheless incredibly addicting to read. The narrative at times felt repetitive and cyclical, I am sure a very conscious choice on Hjorth's part, so I would recommend trying to read this novel in as little sittings as possible.

This book is messy in the best way. Messy longing, messy passion and messy love.

If Only was first published in Norway in 2001, and it does feel dated. The translation is crisp, but the overall themes of adultery, divorce, self-actualization and emancipation read like something from another time. The short description of this novel mentions Annie Ernaux's A Simple Passion, and I would agree with that comparison. However, Ernaux's personal exploration of these themes was far shorter and published thirty years ago, in 1991. I have enjoyed Hjorth's work in the past -- Long Live the Post Horn is on my short list of absolute favorite books, and I have recommended it widely -- but this particular book was a miss for me.

"They know, they have realised yet again that neither can live without the other. It was necessary, inevitable at the start, but then it doesn’t stop. It continues, it grows, it becomes their hallmark."

for the first half, I thought that this was going to be your classic tale of a woman who is completely obsessed with a nonchalant lover. however, this falls into a category i like to call "rotten love" which is essentially when two people are in an all-consuming, destructive relationship which is disguised as passionate love. from the first couple pages, the author makes it clear how this is going to end. it was frustrating reading this book because we see ida make bad, miscalculated decisions when it comes to arnold over many years. despite all the wicked, ill-intended actions, she would forgive him - and sometimes, even beg for his forgiveness. it wasn't surprising though just because of her need for reassurance and validation from him. from the very start, the narrarator states, "She sees nothing but him..." and that carries on for basically the entire novel. ultimately, you go through all the emotions of pity, anger, frustration, empathy, etc while reading about this trainwreck of a relationship.

i found the first half to be a bit boring just because of how repetitive it was. the second half kept me more invested because it had me go through so many strong emotions. despite everything, i found the ending to be more satisfying than i expected but by no means, perfect.

For lovers of obsessive and unhinged female main characters. Hjorth’s writing is suffocating and intense. The reader feels the anguish Ida is in while still keeping the writing subtle. rather than using exaggerations and cliches, Hjorth uses simple yet beautiful writing that fully portrays the character’s intense emotions. anyone who has been in a toxic relationship of any kind will see themselves in this character. She is deeply flawed and delusional yet invokes empathy. This book is exhausting to read on purpose, making the reader understand the exact way the main character feels while living with her obsession.

2.5 Stars

A story of passion, or, perhaps something that appears to be love… but is it?

This is a story that is based on a young woman, Ida, divorced, who becomes involved with a man, Arnold, who she is quickly drawn to, and the ‘relationship’ that follows. Ida is a woman who wants so desperately to be loved that she thinks this is her destiny. The fact that Arnold isn’t always kind to her doesn’t change how she views their relationship. A relationship that she believes - for a while - that is meant to be. Destined. But their relationship, in reality, is based on her being willing to bend her back to please him, and he uses that to encourage her to avoid displeasing him - which, of course, she does.

The writing is fine, but - for me - this story fell apart a little at a time, and over and over again it went downhill - for me.


Pub Date: 03 Sep 2024


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Verso Books (US) / Verso Fiction

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.

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.