In , two young authors met at one such workshop in Sweden. Showing her smiling in long or medium shot, the newspapers described her as an energetic mother of two who had somehow found the time to pass her university exams and write books.
The writers were Jon Fosse and Vigdis Hjorth, and their respective media profiles were now set. His books were serious, hers were not. We know how it turned out for Fosse. When, a few years later, she began to write fiction for adults, the press reinvented her as a hypersexualised wild thing, prone to acting out under the influence of alcohol.
Half the page was taken up with a photograph of Hjorth lying on the grass in an Oslo park. The angle of the shot foregrounded her bare thighs. Hjorth herself once pointed out that the newspapers give young male writers a small photograph and a long text, while young women get a huge picture and a much shorter write-up.
At times she played along. She became a much sought-after speaker, known for her self-ironising and performative talks, which did nothing to undermine her image as a sexy and somewhat ditzy party girl. But critics mistook the persona for the writer, and paid little attention to her actual texts. I also suspect that she performed in order to hide her vulnerability.
In , Hjorth published Om bare If Only , now considered a modern classic. Since then she has published twelve more novels, four of which have been translated into English by Charlotte Barslund: Long Live the Post Horn! In , a jury asked to choose the 25 best Norwegian novels from the last 25 years included If Only on the list.
