If Only by Vigdis Hjorth review – love will tear her apart

The pursuit of an unprepossessing academic is pushed to its tragicomic limits in this highly pleasurable tale of unrequited passion

Aged 30, Oslo-based radio dramatist Ida quits her marriage and hurls herself into the pursuit of a, frankly, unprepossessing man baby of a Norwegian Brecht scholar. She sees him across the street and her frenzied lover’s eye transforms this bald academic with a flapping raincoat into some kind of Scandi Adonis – even though readers may struggle not to cry out: “Mate, you can do better.”

But she can’t: love, if that’s what this is, has done for Ida. Hjorth writes: “For years she will feel a pang in her chest whenever she sees a man’s light-coloured trenchcoat.” Given how rainy it is in northern Europe, that’s a lot of pangs. Even though I have never flown to Trondheim to stalk a Brecht scholar at a Goethe conference – at least not yet – I found myself powerfully identifying with the heroine of Vigdis Hjorth’s 2001 novel If Only, belatedly published in English.

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