Paradise Rot

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval is a fever dream of a novel.

In this we are following Jo, a young Norwegian woman, who has just moved to the UK and is looking for a long-term place to stay during her studies. She finally rents a room in an old, renovated brewery with another girl named Carral, who is slightly older and is working in the office. Old brewery makes all kinds of suspicious noises and clearly is not intended as a living space.

After Jo moves with Carral, things get wearder. They both seem to have clouded consciousness, cause and effect relationship is just not there, hence it’s hard to understand what is actually happening. But at the finishing line all the pieces come together. The old brewery, the rotten apples, the spores, and… mycology.

Paradise Rot is not about conventional storytelling logic or clarity of the plot. It offers a different paradigm of knowing, that spins around the orbit of queer desire. Physiological details are there for the reason (urine has become an object of close exploration) – they take you into the realm of corporeal, sensory experience.

It’s a queer retelling of Biblical story about the Garden of Eden, but way darker and more visceral. An attempt to break through the traditional saint/sinner dichotomy, representing women as either pure celestial maidens or cunning dangerous creatures that lure men into their deadly embrace.

I’ve never came across such an elaborate metaphorical exploration of a queer female desire, that sits somewhere on the plexus of biology and poetry. This novel reinvents traditional discourse on love, and is definitely worth reading.