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If Only
- Author
- Vigdis Hjorth
- Narrator
- Hannah Cabell
- Publisher
- Tantor Media, Inc
- Publish Date
- 17 February 2026
- Run Time
- 9 hours 58 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
NYPL's Best Books of 2024
A groundbreaking, potent novel about the destructive force of romantic love from award-winning writer Vigdis Hjorth
A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, 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 Hjorth's groundbreaking novel from 2001, which melds the yearning, doomed potency of Annie Ernaux's 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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Details
- Author
- Vigdis Hjorth
- Narrator
- Hannah Cabell
- Duration
- 9 hours 58 minutes
- Release Date
- 17 February 2026
- ISBN
- 9798331989026
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Tantor Media, Inc
- Genre
- Fiction: general and literary, Family life fiction, Family life fiction, Narrative theme: Love and relationships
Synopsis
NYPL's Best Books of 2024A groundbreaking, potent novel about the destructive force of romantic love from award-winning writer Vigdis HjorthA relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, 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 Hjorth's groundbreaking novel from 2001, which melds the yearning, doomed potency of Annie Ernaux's 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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