A genre-warping, time-travelling horror novel-slash-feminist manifesto from the author of the acclaimed Paradise Rot
Jenny Hval is a Norwegian writer and musician. Her records include Blood Bitch; Apocalypse, Girl; and Innocence Is Kinky. Her debut novel, Paradise Rot,was published to acclaim in 2018.
"Hval's curiosity is more than simple pleasure in perversity: It's
meant to defile the idea of women's bodies as pristine and plush .
and reshape it into something more dreadfully real. Maybe more
revolutionary than that transfiguration is her disemboweling of
desire itself, unraveling it to its fearsome, primal state, and
exploring the strangeness of how sexuality can alienate one from
oneself; how feelings of mistrust come about when desire is new,
queer and unreliable."
*NPR*
"Strange and lyrical . Hval's writing is surreal and rich with the
grotesque banalities of human existence."
*Publishers Weekly*
"The themes of alienation, queerness, and the unsettling nature of
desire align Hval with modern mainstays like Chris Kraus, Ottessa
Moshfegh, and Maggie Nelson."
-Pitchfork
*Pitchfork*
"Hval's surreal debut riffs on the same layered intricacies as her
music, transcending simple categorisation to create a dreamy
landscape both separate and a part of what we recognise as
reality."
*Stinging Fly*
"With the release of the newly translated Paradise Rot, we can
experience her artistic evolution beyond the shape of a timeline,
as a series of challenging examinations melting and bending in on
themselves . Listening to-or now reading-her work feels like
getting jettisoned into an underwater reality that fantastically
mirrors our own. It would be entirely terrifying, if exploring it
weren't so much fun."
*The Nation*
A sensual, putrid reimagining of the original sin that explores the
dynamics between two young women . [a] striking debut novel . To
read Paradise Rot is to inhabit one of Hval's eerie,
theory-conscious soundscapes. As in a dream, the closeness of this
world to our own and its simultaneous uncanny otherness, awash with
potent symbolism, leaves us looking at everything anew. It took
nine years to be translated into English; I only hope we needn't
wait so long for the two other books, already published in
Norwegian, from this talented polymath.
*Financial Times*
"All I can say is with no electricity I read Paradise Rot by Jenny
Hval in the dark tonight by flashlight, in one go. It will not let
go of you. A surreal *and* realist gem of sensation and detail and
character. Beautiful and boldly written"
*Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation*
Astute
*Kirkus Reviews*
[Girls Against God] is part fever dream, part manifesto, and part
nostalgic reminiscing, with a hefty dose of feminist and queer
theory for good measure. ... Chaotic yet ordered, Hval dives deeply
into the process of self-discovery. [Her] language is visceral and
haunting, corporal and carnal.
*Booklist*
This genre-bending novel from a self-described gloomy child queen
blends feminism and the occult with a touch of time travel.
*Boston Globe*
[An] incendiary genre-bending novel. ... Throughout, Hval employs a
dirge-like repetition of themes (feminist rage prominent among
them), which enlivens her witchy visions and sets the stage for a
reincarnated Edvard Munch, on the run from the vengeful subject of
his painting Puberty. Hval's fascinating exploration is not for the
faint of heart, but those who like it dark will find this right up
their alley.
*Publishers Weekly*
The atmosphere of Girls against God is on its surface bleak and
unforgiving and yet beneath that impression there is a second story
about the strength and solidarity of despised women.
*Morning Star*
[In] Girls Against God, Hval plunges up to her elbows in the thick,
black, chthonic goo of rebellion and angst, through the
quintessentially Scandinavian medium of black metal. The
black-metal scene has historically been extremely sexist, but Hval
reclaims it for the hateful, nihilistic teenage girls of the world
with a decades-spanning tale of cinematic terrorism, political
witchcraft, and satanic noise.
*The A.V. Club (5 new books to read in October)*
What begins with dressing as a goth and cursing at school morphs
into witches' covens and fantastic demonic, cannibalistic banquets.
Along the way Hval segues into the role of language (Norwegian, but
also English) as a tool of both suppression and liberation, and the
role of digital technology in the same.
*Mark Rappolt*
Hval is one of the few musicians to branch out into the world of
literary fiction. For Hval, it is a sideline that makes total
sense, working as an extension of her atmospheric sound and
descriptive, inquisitive lyrics.
*Guardian*
It is Hval's unflinching attitude to mixing genres that has brought
both her essays and her bewitching, otherworldly music to critical
acclaim...Hval is best in her moments of dark humour and in her
writing on femininity.
*Financial Times*
Ambitious...[Girls Against God] has much of interest to say about
the loneliness and pleasure of adolescent blasphemy, with totems of
patriarchal Norwegian authority such as Knut Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen,
Edvard Munch, and the Lutheran church singled out in the narrator's
crosshairs.
*Asymptote Journal*
Anti-bourgeois and feminist, soaked in conviction and rage.
*Telegraph*
Strange and seductive and challenging and, at times, very funny ...
a reminder that musician-turned-author Hval, is one of the most
intriguing, provocative artists around at the moment.
*Herald*
Girls Against God covers every angsty young woman's favourite
subjects. Witchcraft, heavy metal, viscera, and hatred. It's a book
in the grand tradition of Kathy Acker and women surrealists
everywhere, dancing through space and time into different
dimensions.
*The Arts Desk*
An excellent, bewitching read. Jenny Hval's musical ability makes
her a natural novelist - her writing often feeling like a blend of
lyrics and essays. Girls Against God is a terrifying, striking
fusion of the occult and female repression.
*Indiependent*
In Girls Against God, Hval challenges the form and conventions of
the novel once again: a vivid, seething voice narrates a series of
apocalyptic events cut together with food fights, black metal
shows, black magic, and surreal, witchy rituals.
*Lit Hub*
Hval, who is known for using body imagery to express political
ideas about art, depicts cultish rituals to subvert what she sees
as "the restrictive framework of our daily lives."
*New Yorker*
Girls Against God is compelling, surprising, and frequently
inspiring. ... laced throughout with powerful urban imagery and
striking turns of phrase.
*PopMatters*
Truly transgressive
*Severine*
[Girls Against God] is a must-read for anyone looking for a
mystifying, genre-bending read.
*The Tulane Hullabaloo*
Riveting ... Like the French philosopher Luce Irigaray, [Hval]
explores ideas of what a feminist or radical language would sound
like.
*Guardian*
Hval is steeped in the traditions of autofiction and the
theoretical novel. ... The plot aspires toward an "escape route
from structure and rhetoric," and makes room for thrilling
observations on art, magic, and rebirth.
*Pitchfork (Favourite Music Books of 2020)*
If Girls Against God were an artwork, it would be a Munch - raw,
dark and seething.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Readers drawn to more experimental literature will feel strangely
at home in Jenny Hval's novel. For all of Girls Against God's
baffling imagery and cryptic dialogue, the narrator registers as an
individual longing for an existence outside the binary of light and
dark, good and evil; a voice oppressed by a lifetime of being told
it must be saved because it is lost, one that sees in the archetype
of the witch not a heretic or a deviant but something more
elemental: someone who is free.
*Zyzzyva*
[Hval] pries into black metal's past to present an alternative,
radical, and genuinely liberating trajectory for black metal to
exist as a dissident art form.
*Overland*
Hval's writing embraces finding new ways to express thought
patterns, experiences, and stories-and encourages people to let go
of logic rather than look for the familiar markers of
institutionally accepted creative writing.
*Hazlitt*
To say that Jenny Hval has an impressive creative range is an
understatement ... Girls Against God is ambitious, with a plot that
blends time travel, black metal, witchcraft, and film theory.
*Tor*
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