There are many iterations of the obsessive female lover, from bunny boilers to those left hanging on the telephone. Whether this reflection on a love affair becomes a trite tribute or a poetic tragedy depends entirely on the artist.
It takes two to tango but one to become obsessive. Ida is on the cusp of a divorce when she meets the married Arnold, fellow academic and notorious philanderer, If Only follows this affair from beginning to end. Much like Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion, Vigdis Hjorth’s If Only reads like a confessional, but while Ernaux contains a modicum of restraint, Hjorth’s novel is a purging of a volatile affair. Her prose leaves very little room to breathe, there are no chapter breaks or pauses, leaving every paragraph end feeling like a desperate gasp before launching back into Ida’s fixation.
Ida devotes herself to Arnold in a way that makes for uncomfortable and at times even grating reading. Arnold is a whirlwind of untampered id, but even as a young woman our narrator has a deep-rooted rationale that anchors her. For those fond of Hjorth’s later work, we recognise this bastion of independence, even if it is only beginning to be built here. Each realisation about the truth of Arnold is another brick that fortifies her against him.
Coming to If Only – an earlier novel but a much later translation – after having read Hjorth’s later novels, such as Will and Testament and Is Mother Dead, feels like unearthing an old diary of a close friend you have met later in life. The phrasing is similar, you’ve heard the summation of this past life, and there are even glimpses of the person you now know as a fully realised individual. Within these pages Hjorth recognises the potential strength in her voice, an empowering possibility that is breadcrumbed throughout.
It is exactly this skilful self-reflection that sets Hjorth apart from the many examinations of heterosexual relationships, as If Only contains early gleanings of the psychological trauma her narrator prefers to be blind to, leaving us with a portrait of a relationship as a toxic distraction from necessary self-examination.
If Only by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund is out now (Verso, £12.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
