Paradise Rot: A Novel (Verso Fiction)
"As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder.”
—Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick
A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery
Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. In a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, she finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. Jo’s sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.
This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.
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Community Reviews
Overall, the text does deliver on atmospheric queer desire themes. I felt Jo's character may have been overly stimulated easily because they're not physically intimate with anyone and are still a virgin and that hidden desire seeps outwards into every day things.
It felt like I was reading a book about a typical international student who goes to NYC for college and tries to find housing, fit in and make friends. Up until the point were the brewery and her roommate begin to suck the life out of her and consume her movements, thoughts, actions and memories. There is a growing sense of gothic and body horror and grotesque rotting imagery in the text that migrates from the apples onto the old, rundown, mold filled brewery building they live in.
I struggled with Prim's character and whether or not his character existed within the real world or in between where I suppose Jo's roommate was.
Her attachment to the building was unhealthy and extreme; could her consistent fatigue and sickness be linked to the building continuously draining her? Maybe
It felt like I was reading a book about a typical international student who goes to NYC for college and tries to find housing, fit in and make friends. Up until the point were the brewery and her roommate begin to suck the life out of her and consume her movements, thoughts, actions and memories. There is a growing sense of gothic and body horror and grotesque rotting imagery in the text that migrates from the apples onto the old, rundown, mold filled brewery building they live in.
I struggled with Prim's character and whether or not his character existed within the real world or in between where I suppose Jo's roommate was.
Her attachment to the building was unhealthy and extreme; could her consistent fatigue and sickness be linked to the building continuously draining her? Maybe
