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If Only
If Only | Vigdis Hjorth
1 post | 1 read | 2 to read
A passionate and groundbreaking bestseller from one of Norways most highly-regarded and award-winning novelists, for readers of Annie Ernaux's A Simple Passion and Coco Mellors' Cleopatra and Frankenstein A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14C, 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 Hjorths ground-breaking novel from 2001, which melds the yearning, doomed potency of Annie Ernauxs 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.
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BarbaraBB
If Only | Vigdis Hjorth
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Mehso-so

Ida and Arnold are both working in the Norwegian literary world when they meet and fall in love. Both are married however and have kids.
What follows are over 300 pages about an all consuming destructive love affair.
Very well written, I could feel their unhappiness, feel for Ida and their wish to be together but it was also hard and frustrating to read.

Not as good as Is Mother Dead.

TrishB Great review 👍🏻 3w
Cathythoughts Good to read this review, I‘m halfway through Is Mother Dead, and I really like it. I‘m not sure I‘d like the story of this other one. 🤔 3w
BarbaraBB @Cathythoughts I really liked Is Mother Dead too. She‘s a fab writer but this story is getting a bit repetitive (exactly what she means I am sure). 3w
sarahbarnes This makes me feel better, as I tried to read this one a few months ago and gave up. I definitely liked Is Mother Dead better. 3w
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