READER’S GUIDE
We Never Talked about Love
Introductions to published book chapters from the novel “We Never Talked about Love” (previously: “The Love We Had”) — published in ILLUMINATION Book Chapters
The purpose of this post is to help readers to navigate and get easy access to the book chapters of “We Never Talked about Love” (early version: “The Love We Had”), published in ILLUMINATION Book Chapters.
For each chapter, there is a short excerpt from the chapter that gives an idea of the content.
The post will be updated after the publication of each new chapter.
Novel chapters
Links and extracts:
Chapter 1 I Love It When Things Are Normal
From chapter 1:
I came home at about the usual time. I came in, closed the door behind me. I listened, heard no sound, nothing. I called up the stairs.
“Hello!”
No answer. It was quiet in the house. An unfamiliar silence. I thought it was a bit strange. I took off my shoes and hung my jacket on the hook.
Chapter 2 I Came Home as Usual
From chapter 2:
In retrospect, I thought that she might have seemed a little different that day, maybe a little excited. A little abnormally happy. Wasn’t there something strange there, believe? Why hadn’t I noticed it? When I thought about it, I was uncertain. Maybe it was nothing.
How was she when she was tense? What was the need for me to notice that she was very tense? I didn’t know. I thought I actually knew her well, and yet I didn’t. Maybe most of the latter. Maybe she was a stranger to me, maybe she always was?
Chapter 3 I Believe in What I See
From chapter 3:
I’m not a very suspicious person. I believe in what I see and I have always believed in her before. I have not had reason to be suspicious of her because she was always a reliable person and always does what she says she should. I know everything about her, I thought. I usually thought so. But sometimes the doubts were there, I had to admit to myself
Chapter 4 I Am Going to Write
From chapter 4:
I’m going to try something I haven’t done before. I am going to write a journal, a blog where I will get down a few words about what I am experiencing nowadays.
It is not the intention that this should be so very advanced, but I will try to be open and very honest about what I write.
This blog will be about my meeting with Eira and what happened to us two these past couples of years. Eira has told me about her own blog. I actually knew that she was writing, because I had seen some of her articles and poems in the local newspaper. That happened even before I knew who she is, before I had the chance to get to know her.
Chapter 5 All we have is — ourselves!
From chapter 5:
Do I need to be with someone so that I do not feel lonely?
Do I need to connect with another person to feel well in life?
I connected with my wife, years ago. And we had something. The connection was good for both of us, I thought.
So here are my short answers: yes and no.
Chapter 6 Coming together — escaping loneliness
From chapter 6:
“You see,” I said, “many people seek together because they think it is so wonderful to be together, getting out of aloneness.”
“Yes, maybe.”
“And they think that just coming together — coming out of being alone — is the cure for everything.”
I hesitated. She looked gravely at me. I don’t know why — I suddenly felt at unease.
Chapter 7 When I first met her
From chapter 7:
We can talk. I know what to say. What she talks about is what I can talk about. I think that’s one of the most important things in any relationship. For a relationship to work, both must be open and talk about what matters in life.
And then there is more, there is an affiliation, and there are attractions.
Chapter 8 An unskilled factory worker
From chapter 8:
And is it too late? Has the race been run? I can also think that it is never too late. I can invest in the education I did not take, or another education. Maybe I can succeed now. Maybe I can get on with my life. It’s not too late yet, I can get on with it and fix what is not the way I wanted it. Maybe I can get the education I was thinking of. An education that allows me to have a job, a profession where I can straighten my back and look myself in the eye in the mirror and say:
«You did it! You have grasped the important things in life. You are a free human being.»
Chapter 9 That Sunday morning we met at the parking lot
From chapter 9:
I have forgotten now if she smiled at me and if I did to her. I think I was just excited and that she seemed the same. What we said to each other, the first words and sentences, it is gone now, probably for good.
My clearest memory is that we started to walk towards the forest trail, side by side over the tarmac, she and I. I believe I began to talk a lot when we started walking. I was a little nervous because of the unfamiliar setting, perhaps before everything I was afraid that there would arise a silence that would be difficult to handle between us.
Chapter 10 At some point they gradually stopped listening to one another
From chapter 10:
When two people have been a couple for a very long time a lot has happened, both sweet and sour, both exciting and trivial things. Often it happens at some point on the long road that the two gradually stop listening to one another. Other times both no longer see the other as in the first period in the relationship. They both annoy at things that formerly did not cause irritation or conflict. Tolerance and patience diminish and is eventually completely gone. Indifference and irritation, irony, spitefulness, sarcasm, and that kind of bad behaviour take over.
Chapter 11 Going into the furnace hall to dig out shit from the smelter furnace
From chapter 11:
I’m standing in the locker room, looking at my watch, putting on my overalls. It’s stiff from old shit. I’m going into the furnace hall to dig out shit from the crashed furnace, the oldest of the three, furnace 1, it should have been shut down a long time ago.
I think about what I’m doing in my life. I should have gotten away from here a long time ago. But I walk here in the gray shit, this foul-smelling factory, the carbide that tears in my nose, all the crap jobs I have to take because no one else bothers.
Chapter 12 In a small boat far out on the high seas
From chapter 12:
I’m asleep. I have a dream. It is windless. I’m in a small boat far out on the high seas. I sit on the ahead in the boat, my hands resting in my lap. I’m uncomfortable not knowing what’s going on.
There is dawning unrest inside me. I do not know how deep it is under the thin hull. Do not know which direction the currents are carrying me now, dazzled by the white light from above.
Chapter 13 The Ugliest City Can Be the Happiest City in the World
From chapter 13:
What matters is not what you can see around you but what you feel inside. Therefore, for the right people, the ugliest city in the world can be the happiest city in the world.
Humans search for happiness and sometimes, on a rare occasion, they take the risk. Sometimes they break the rules, and they find something that resembles what they are looking for out there.
I look for my happiness as best I can. She says something from the kitchen, I hear sunshine in her voice but I do not get what she says.
Chapter 14 A Man from the North
From chapter 14:
I’m a man from the north of the country, and some people have wondered why I landed here, in this small, worn down, dirty, and almost claustrophobic industrial town.
It happened in the way that I started working here many years ago, and later it has become like that. It became like that, among other things, because I did not educate myself. I was at sea for several years in my youth, and later I came here and then it was natural to take the job I got here, and just now I am very happy with it. I did not want to travel north again. It was better to be here, I thought. And then there was a lady at the time as well.
Chapter 15 The Old Factory on the River Plain
From chapter 15:
I walk across the night-black asphalt between the bathroom building and the factory gate, feel raindrops against my face. I am confused about what to do now. What I’m waiting for is a sign from her, just a few words like can tell me that everything is fine. It’s nothing else, I hope. I ask for a little hint so I can know that things are as we said.
As I walk up towards the block on the flatland, I try to clear my thoughts and recall her messages. She has sent me many small messages where she says things that warm me and make me long for her.
When I get inside the door I first walk around the room and turn on the light. Nothing is so discouraging as coming home alone to a dark, cold and empty apartment.
Chapter 16 You Give Me Warmth and I Love It
From chapter 16:
It is becoming more and more clear. Every human being is most dependent on trusting himself. No one can trust the other in everything and get it the way you want.
Each and every one must create and take care of their own happiness and try as best they can to make it happen. The other usually fails not out of malice or complacency, but for other, perhaps external reasons.
The hard but fair truth to take in is that everyone, yes, every one of us is dramatically alone. We are left to ourselves, to who we are, who we can think we should be.
The other one, the loved one, is a parallel universe a little further away that I may for a while be a part of. For we need each other, we will give each other mutual support, be a travel companion for each other, on the road to the unknown somewhere further ahead.
Chapter 17 How It Is to Lose Love
From chapter 17:
I stand in front of the open window and the wind outside pulls the heat from the room. I close my eyes, stand like this for a while, cold air against my face, raindrops against my cheek — is that how it is to lose love?
Then there’s finally a new message. She says she thinks of me. She says she likes to lie next to me. She writes that she wants to be close.
I answer that I want it too, and wait for more.
But she becomes silent. She does not write anymore, she does not speak anymore, she becomes silent and invisible. Losing love is a bit like losing yourself.
Chapter 18 Our Secret Love
From chapter 18:
Whatever happens, I will stand for us and our love. I will escape from this boredom, from this trap — the marriage I’ve been in for too many years.
Actually, I don’t know why people come together. The real reason why they seek together and make love, make children. Not just one. Often two, three, four. Why’s that?
In the end, there is nothing but misery. In the relationship, they feel uneasy, uncomfortable. Sometimes one of them. Often both. They are unhappy. And then, when they feel this way, when they discover the impact and the triviality of life — their life, it’s too late.
Chapter 19 Where Have You Been?
From chapter 19:
When I came back it was night, the house lay there silent and I went in as quietly as I could. I climbed the stairs and put myself to bed in the other bedroom.
The next day I was exhausted and barely got up from bed. When I got down to the kitchen he sat there. There was complete silence in the house. He just sat there and watched. The face expressionless. He looked at me and asked:
“Where have you been?”
He looked at me, and I couldn’t meet his gaze. He repeated the question.
“Where have you been?”
Chapter 20 Anger
From chapter 20:
He only thinks of going out, hunting, or fishing. His only focus is on going away, driving out to the farm near the fjord where he grew up. Go hunting up in the mountains.
It’s not just me who has tried to tell him: “You must grow up, man. You must become an adult, man.”
I know there are others who think like that. His sister once said to me: “Lasse — an overgrown boy.”
But his parents do not mind. His mother always says: “Lars, he is such a good boy.” And his father — the son becomes like the father, what else can one expect?
Chapter 21 I Feel Numb, I Am Frozen
From chapter 21:
I have long since passed the middle of my life. I have three kids. For more than twenty years I have had a man that I thought I loved, and I long believed he was fond of me too. He’s a man I thought would love me my whole life. I thought I would grow old with him. He’s the man who chose me more than twenty years ago. In the clear light of the reflection, I have been thinking: Because I chose him! — He chose me because I chose him!
He’s a man who has changed. Together with me, with all my mistakes and all my faults, he has been digging trenches between us. We have created an abyss between us, an abyss so dark, so dangerous that it hardly is to endure.
Chapter 22 The House in Baker Road
From chapter 22:
— What am I going to do now, once I know I’ve crossed the border? — Now, when I have crossed the line, this invisible line. I now know I love a different man and not the one lying in the bed next to me.
So, what shall I do now?
This voice inside me doesn’t leave me alone. Those thoughts crumble around and around in my head, and I know that the night will be poor in sleep. The days to come will cause me turmoil, a turmoil that spreads and fills the void inside me with questions to which I know no answers.
Chapter 23 I Have Taken Steps Across a Boundary
From chapter 23:
I feel ice cold inside because I know that I have taken steps across a boundary, I have thrown myself into it, out in the dangerous, the forbidden, the tempting, the alluring.
I tell myself — it is like this, this is how it is now, it has become so, and I take responsibility for it myself.
They say it is like this when someone is unfaithful, it is the deceived himself who has much of the responsibility for what has happened.
When a spouse or partner, feeling degraded, let down, worthless and take the leap, it is the deceived person himself who have used their chances poorly who have failed and let down him or her whom she had promised eternal fidelity.
Chapter 24 Where He Wants to Be
From chapter 24:
He does not care, that’s how it is, my husband doesn’t care. When he has finished a row of shifts and has several days off, it’s like turmoil that grabs him, and he takes the car and drives home to the farm where he came from. He returns home to his mother and father. He always goes home to mom and dad when he is free because it looks like that’s where he wants to be.
I have this emptiness inside me. It’s like a street without a human being, a street where no human being walks. It’s like a room where no one wants to be, a room in a house in a small town that some say is the ugliest city in the world.
Chapter 25 Days and Nights Gone By
From chapter 25:
I had a man with whom I was a lover, and together with him, I think I experienced something similar to what they call happiness.
But then, gradually, almost imperceptibly, he began to slip away from me. He and I were lovers, and we started to lose each other.
When did it start happening? Neither he nor I can answer unambiguously and precisely. It just happened like that. Life just became like that. And the question is thus clear: — What now? What should my life be like? Will I live with the days filled with lack, longing? Will he and I go ahead and exist side by side, two alienated lovers, two people who exist side by side, as the days and years slip away, and time imperceptibly ticks toward an ending that I can’t see for myself.
Chapter 26 Hindsight Can Be Salt in the Wound
From chapter 26:
I think back, and sometimes a little hindsight can also be helpful in figuring things out. But I have to watch out. I must remember: hindsight is not a patch on the wound. Hindsight can many times rather be salt in the wound.
Sometimes I say to myself: It’s best not to think about it. But I have to. I met him, he met me, and I thought that was the big thing that happened to me. I thought I had finally met the man with a big M. I thought the meeting with him becoming my husband was a big event in my life and the most important thing that had happened to me so far in my life.
Chapter 27 The Darkest Day in My Life
From chapter 27:
I felt unlucky, without hope.
My body was stiffened, the pain during childbirth was forgotten, but the pain in my head would not let go, the pain inside me was tearing and rubbing in me and wanting to tear me into pieces. Going from the greatest joy when I knew the baby is coming out, when I knew she is born, when I wait for her to be laid on my chest, that she is finally here, close with me. To go from the greatest joy I have ever known to the blackest of the black, the darkest of the dark. To stand on the edge of this abyss. When this person in white cloth stands in front of me with a tight face and says this word that I shall hate forever. Stillborn. The child, she is a girl, is unfortunately stillborn.
Chapter 28 The Night I Freed Myself
From chapter 28:
He is my husband. He is the one I have chosen. And he is not the worst I could have gotten. He is not a bad person. He does what he thinks he must do. What he thinks he should do.
That’s right. He does as best he can. — Or almost, I feel that I have to add. He is who he is, he is himself. And I had finally started thinking that I should stand up for this joint project. I will contribute, I will give it all I have to give. It should not depend on me. It really shouldn’t.
And yet — sometimes I get so tired. I have a kind of feeling of apprehension.
Chapter 29 Dear Husband
From chapter 29:
Last night you were angry with me because you say I do not talk to you, that we do not talk. If that’s the truth, and you get it right — yes then, why don’t you yourself talk to me? I am your woman; I want to be your friend like we were before. And this is the truth. What I tell you now — that’s the truth there is, and you can’t change the truth, because this truth is my truth. And my love — you cannot change it, no way.
Therefore, dear Lars, it is so that I do what I want to do because now I know what I have to do, what I need to do. We have to finish this, and you cannot do anything about it — it’s not your job, you have no right to decide in my life.
Chapter 30 Inside — Outside
From chapter 30:
There are some basic needs we humans have. One of these is the need to feel accepted, to be on the inside. To love and to be loved back is to be inside. To love and not be loved back is the opposite. It’s being at the outside, and it has always been a problem for me.
…
I have long felt that he and I live together under the same roof, and that we totally lack the ability to listen to each other. I have felt that I live in an exile. I am in a way expelled from my own life. And I feel I have to do something about it. This does not work anymore. I have to deal with it. I have to get out. There is no way, no other way than the way out.
Chapter 31 Our Love Will Last for Ever
From chapter 31:
We get so close to each other. He and I — there’s so much we have in common. I discover it every time we are together. I know in my heart that I must take this chance. I have to do what I can because I will not get many such chances in life. That’s why I do what I do.
Chapter 32 Dare to Say These Little Words
I have been with my husband for almost two decades, and I have been through the usual stages that in most cases are part of a long-term relationship: falling in love, sex and love, engagement and wedding, more love and sex, pregnancy, birth and puerperium. And I have experienced waves and hills, I have experienced great joys and great sorrows. Together we have experienced the best of the good and the worst of losses.
Chapter 33 The Distance Between Us
I have thought of him and me as two people building a wall between them. We were for many years busy building a wall between the two of us. At first, I had thought that we had come together in a joint project that was about building a home together. With great joint efforts we were going to build something. And we should succeed by supporting each other and by helping each other. We were to stand together on this joint project.
Chapter 34 Stand Up for Myself and My Dreams
“Lars,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in us, do you?”
“Believe, what do you mean?”
“Either you believe or you do not believe.”
“But what then?”
“In us, Lars. You and me.”
“What nonsense. No, I do not understand what you’re talking about!”
Chapter 35 The Next Thing in Life
I was standing outside his door. I felt my heart beat.
“Can I come in?” I said.
“Of course!”
“Excuse me,” I said. “Excuse me for coming here, at your door.”
He had looked a little surprised when he opened the door. He had opened the door very quickly after I rang, so fast that he surprised me. He smiled.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Sorry I’m coming here so late. Excuse me for coming here to your door this way.”
“Oh no, it’s all right,” he said. “It’s okay. — And you, are you doing well?”
Chapter 36 The Road I Have Gone
I don’t want to lure myself. Everyday life, the gray and monotonous, can always return. And what happens then? What happens after all when between me and him it’s no longer new and fresh. What about when he and I, like almost every other couple, become affected of life’s grayscale?
Everyday life should not be allowed to come between us. Together I and he should take care of the secret covenant, I and he must together own this secret room, those soft moments in life that no one should know about, and that no one should be allowed to disturb.
Chapter 37 This Is What I’ve Been Waiting For
I walk down the Baker Road, I take a shortcut down to the grocery store — going to purchase necessary items for this day and for the days ahead. I feel it tingle in the neck I turn around, but there is no one behind me.
I look towards the windows of the houses I pass by. I can’t see anyone there, but I know they are there. They sit behind their window. They look and I know that their glance is on me, maybe follow me wherever I go with the handbag down the road, on the way to the grocery store. I know someone is watching me, someone looks at me that way which I would rather not have been watched. They see me, but not as I would like to be seen.
Øivind H. Solheim is a novel author and a nature photographer from Norway who loves writing fiction, poetry, essays, and articles helping others understand life, other humans, and themselves. He has published six novels, two non-fiction books, and a poetry book.
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