PARADISE ROT by Jenny Hval

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've wanted to read this book for a while and decided to read it today.

Jo is a student from Norway who is far from home. In a new country, she's determined to devote herself to Biology. That's how she ends up renting a room inside a restored brewery with a woman who's a little older. And the longer they live together, the stranger Jo's life becomes...

Yikes. This book is a fever dream wrapped inside the damp, festering shell of rotting fruit. The writing is lyrical and brilliantly captures the slip between fantasy and reality of a young woman dealing with an attraction she can't control, and the decay that drips around her as her friendship with Carral grows. Or should I say co-dependency?

The interactions between these two inspire a lot of bizarre and ugly imagery. But the words are used so well that the vivid descriptions made me feel like I was living inside the grossest version of the Garden of Eden. I like the way the religious allegory is used, then turned into reflections about gender.

Before reading this book I'd heard a lot of talk about the urine, so I was expecting the worst. Even thought it might distract/ruin the story, but it didn't. Jo's fascination with fluids and liquids isn't limited to toilet observations, it goes beyond that. What all of these descriptions amount to is a woman whose surroundings and relationships are slowly decaying.

I really enjoyed this. It's weird and has a way of getting under your skin.


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