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Paradise Rot
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. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive. Jo’s sensitivity, and all her senses, become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, and 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. A complex, poetic and strange novel about bodies, sexuality and the female gender.
Jo is in a strange new country for university, and having a more peculiar time than most. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive. Jo’s sensitivity, and all her senses, become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, and 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. A complex, poetic and strange novel about bodies, sexuality and the female gender.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
945 people are currently reading
88623 people want to read
About the author
Jenny Hval
7 books640 followersJenny Hval (f. 1980) er bosatt i Oslo og har skrivekunstutdanning fra The University of Melbourne. Hun har gitt ut to musikkalbum under navnet Rockettothesky, og et under eget navn. Hun har publisert skjønnlitterære tekster og essays i tidsskrifter og antologiene Ferskvare og Pilot. Jenny Hval er redaksjonsmedlem i Vinduet. Hun ble i 2010 kåret til en av Norges mest nyskapende kunstnere. Perlebryggeriet er hennes første bok.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 7,699 reviews
December 10, 2018
lots of piss, loved it
October 4, 2022
Girls will say “i know a place” and take you to an old brewery covered in piss and rot. That’s romance!
March 17, 2023
go piss girl
April 18, 2023
bisexual pee book
September 13, 2021
reading this felt like having one of those weird ass half dreams as you're trying to fall asleep that you aren't sure is real or not
August 3, 2020
literary equivalent of 99% humidity and no rain
August 27, 2021
Sometimes you get a weird roommate but you’re also the weird roommate
September 22, 2021
yes, i read the reviews. the amount of piss still surprised me.
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July 29, 2024
‘Does this look like paradise or what?’
If you love bodily fluids, do I have a book for you! Okay, if that's not your thing, this is still worth the surreal journey...
I distinctly remember a moment as a kid when we took snow and put it under a microscope. Suddenly the snow, something often associated with blankness, purity, silence and prettiness, was revealed to be teeming with tiny, moving life. It was shocking, repulsive to some, and not just a reminder to not eat snow but that life is…well, pretty gross. The stickiness and secretions of existence froth upon the pages of Norwegian writer and musician Jenny Hval’s Paradise Rot, a sort of bleak bildungsroman where Djåoanna—or Jo as she comes to be called—has left Norway to study biology in England and finds her identity fermenting amidst the rot of her new life. The brief novel, brilliantly translated by Marjam Idriss, comes alive through blunt sensory descriptions, symbolism of damnation, a mycological lexicon and is awash in bodily fluids and the sludge of decay, creating a rather unsettlingly moist and grungy atmosphere. While not for the feint of heart, or to be read on a lunch break, Hval infuses her story with a sickly surrealism that makes Paradise Rot a rather unforgettable and enigmatic narrative of queer transformation.
‘But my dreams are full of apples, and in the dark my body slowly transforms into fruit: tonsils shrinking to seeds and lungs to cores.’
If you’ve heard of Paradise Rot, you’ve likely been warned of the amount of human piss that floods the pages. While there was less urine than I expected going into this, the book is practically dripping in decay and grime and full of unsentimental depictions of the human body at our most animalistic. It read similarly to Andrea Abreu López’s Dog’s Of Summer in that regard, though more of a linear narrative. Though once one is fully covered in the slime of story it is hard to deny the rather poetic sensibilities and narratorial strengths. Hval is also a notable Norwegian musician with songs that tend towards many of themes in Paradise Rot, such as her 2016 concept album Blood Bitch that is inspired by vampires, menstruation and 70s horror films. Her lyricism really sings here and functions on multiple layers simultaneous, and I was vaguely reminded of Julia Armfield’s prose, which I really enjoy as well.
‘And that is how we are bound together…Carral and Jo together. A black, dead and rotten fruit.’
This is a coming-of-age story where identity is less formed than it is fermented, and fermentation is a dominant theme through much of the text. We see Jo’s former self begin to break down almost immediately, dissolving in the wet English climate and language. ‘I suddenly knew nothing about myself, nothing seemed right in English, nothing was true,’ though she finds a foothold in this strange new world in Carral, a much more dominant personality who happens to have space to share in her apartment inside an old brewery. Through a lack of privacy, the two begin to become quite close to the point that their friendship often appears as a more intimate relationship to others.
There is a sense of a convergence here. Jo is told by a classmate she has taken on many of Carral’s mannerisms, not limited to her speech patterns of taking tea the English way, and Carral tells Jo’s childhood stories as if they are her own. One might sense a sort of Fight Club-esque set of alter-egos—which is certainly there for the analysis—though I’d argue Hval engages more symbolically and surrealistically than the literalness of Palahniuk’s novel. Then again there is also the rumor of a girl who fell into a batch of beer and died, a fermented ghost haunting the old place and Carral does seem to bloat up like yeast rising when sick…
We can also see Carral as a sort of catalyst for Jo’s dissolving boundaries, moving from separate individuals towards a closeness and complete lack of privacy in the brewery and, ultimately, a sexual unity like dissolving into each other entirely. Jo’s sexual awakenings through the book they both read, Moon Lips, comes from Carral, as is her being set up with their neighbor (who we are told looks like Julian McMahon as Carral continuously watches Charmed ), and it is Carral who seems to dissolve the social barriers around queer desires. Though in the fermentation of the selves, we see the two women in a state of rot:
Hot, right? Kidding. But actually that is something I really appreciated about this book is that it is so unabashed about how gross life is and shows human bodies in all our puss and piss and stench as something that is truly beautiful. Even if Jo looks at her own body as ‘a rotten apple core’ or the intimate embraces with Carral being together ‘Slumped…like gouged snakes digesting their prey.’ Jo’s studies of mushrooms and fungus start to overlay her understanding of interpersonal relationships and her little microcosm community starts to feel like a sort of mycelium with her and Carral feeding off each other.
The blending is most complete in the rather surreal scenes around the neighbor’s rather unsettling short story about Jo, where the two women become one body in order to sexually please men, resulting in Carral writing her own ending:
Not only is it some awesome lesbian punk stuff, but it also shows Pym the neighbor as an impurity in the fermentation process, something that must be removed and destroyed. His lusts register as repulsive, such as his tongue in her mouth described as a slug, and he is more food the two women to share than someone to satisfy. Like I said, this book goes some wild places. And is, ultimately, a fairy tale of identity about damnation and rot but rising to something better from it all.
‘I’ll finish your fairy tale. You forgot to mention the snake. In the story the apple poisons the snake, and Eve packs her books and moves out of paradise. The End.’
For those who can handle it, Paradise Rot is quite the surreal descent into decay in order to think of the self at our basest and most unsightly elements. It is a story where you feel like each page must be sticky, that you must be drenched in grime, that your body is rotting and dripping off your bones right there in front of you, yet also one where that suddenly feels like a sort of freedom and opportunity for resurrection into a new and better self. ‘There are two versions of myself and only one managed to get out,’ Jo thinks, lets hope the version of ourselves that manages to survive this novel are better for it.
3.5/5
If you love bodily fluids, do I have a book for you! Okay, if that's not your thing, this is still worth the surreal journey...
I distinctly remember a moment as a kid when we took snow and put it under a microscope. Suddenly the snow, something often associated with blankness, purity, silence and prettiness, was revealed to be teeming with tiny, moving life. It was shocking, repulsive to some, and not just a reminder to not eat snow but that life is…well, pretty gross. The stickiness and secretions of existence froth upon the pages of Norwegian writer and musician Jenny Hval’s Paradise Rot, a sort of bleak bildungsroman where Djåoanna—or Jo as she comes to be called—has left Norway to study biology in England and finds her identity fermenting amidst the rot of her new life. The brief novel, brilliantly translated by Marjam Idriss, comes alive through blunt sensory descriptions, symbolism of damnation, a mycological lexicon and is awash in bodily fluids and the sludge of decay, creating a rather unsettlingly moist and grungy atmosphere. While not for the feint of heart, or to be read on a lunch break, Hval infuses her story with a sickly surrealism that makes Paradise Rot a rather unforgettable and enigmatic narrative of queer transformation.
‘But my dreams are full of apples, and in the dark my body slowly transforms into fruit: tonsils shrinking to seeds and lungs to cores.’
If you’ve heard of Paradise Rot, you’ve likely been warned of the amount of human piss that floods the pages. While there was less urine than I expected going into this, the book is practically dripping in decay and grime and full of unsentimental depictions of the human body at our most animalistic. It read similarly to Andrea Abreu López’s Dog’s Of Summer in that regard, though more of a linear narrative. Though once one is fully covered in the slime of story it is hard to deny the rather poetic sensibilities and narratorial strengths. Hval is also a notable Norwegian musician with songs that tend towards many of themes in Paradise Rot, such as her 2016 concept album Blood Bitch that is inspired by vampires, menstruation and 70s horror films. Her lyricism really sings here and functions on multiple layers simultaneous, and I was vaguely reminded of Julia Armfield’s prose, which I really enjoy as well.
‘And that is how we are bound together…Carral and Jo together. A black, dead and rotten fruit.’
This is a coming-of-age story where identity is less formed than it is fermented, and fermentation is a dominant theme through much of the text. We see Jo’s former self begin to break down almost immediately, dissolving in the wet English climate and language. ‘I suddenly knew nothing about myself, nothing seemed right in English, nothing was true,’ though she finds a foothold in this strange new world in Carral, a much more dominant personality who happens to have space to share in her apartment inside an old brewery. Through a lack of privacy, the two begin to become quite close to the point that their friendship often appears as a more intimate relationship to others.
‘It felt like the brewery had been transformed into a big wet tank that was waiting for Carral and I to decompose within it: a rotten, reeking Garden of Eden.’
There is a sense of a convergence here. Jo is told by a classmate she has taken on many of Carral’s mannerisms, not limited to her speech patterns of taking tea the English way, and Carral tells Jo’s childhood stories as if they are her own. One might sense a sort of Fight Club-esque set of alter-egos—which is certainly there for the analysis—though I’d argue Hval engages more symbolically and surrealistically than the literalness of Palahniuk’s novel. Then again there is also the rumor of a girl who fell into a batch of beer and died, a fermented ghost haunting the old place and Carral does seem to bloat up like yeast rising when sick…
We can also see Carral as a sort of catalyst for Jo’s dissolving boundaries, moving from separate individuals towards a closeness and complete lack of privacy in the brewery and, ultimately, a sexual unity like dissolving into each other entirely. Jo’s sexual awakenings through the book they both read, Moon Lips, comes from Carral, as is her being set up with their neighbor (who we are told looks like Julian McMahon as Carral continuously watches Charmed ), and it is Carral who seems to dissolve the social barriers around queer desires. Though in the fermentation of the selves, we see the two women in a state of rot:
‘Her skin was soft, softer than I remembered, as if she was rotten too, a fallen Eve. Under us I could hear the apples rumble. Not a real sound, but a sort of internal buzzing, like how you can imagine hearing nails and hair growing or buds opening.’
Hot, right? Kidding. But actually that is something I really appreciated about this book is that it is so unabashed about how gross life is and shows human bodies in all our puss and piss and stench as something that is truly beautiful. Even if Jo looks at her own body as ‘a rotten apple core’ or the intimate embraces with Carral being together ‘Slumped…like gouged snakes digesting their prey.’ Jo’s studies of mushrooms and fungus start to overlay her understanding of interpersonal relationships and her little microcosm community starts to feel like a sort of mycelium with her and Carral feeding off each other.
The blending is most complete in the rather surreal scenes around the neighbor’s rather unsettling short story about Jo, where the two women become one body in order to sexually please men, resulting in Carral writing her own ending:
‘The women feast on the poor man’s flesh, And chew each bone whilst it is fresh, So the two women can become one with a kiss.’
Not only is it some awesome lesbian punk stuff, but it also shows Pym the neighbor as an impurity in the fermentation process, something that must be removed and destroyed. His lusts register as repulsive, such as his tongue in her mouth described as a slug, and he is more food the two women to share than someone to satisfy. Like I said, this book goes some wild places. And is, ultimately, a fairy tale of identity about damnation and rot but rising to something better from it all.
‘I’ll finish your fairy tale. You forgot to mention the snake. In the story the apple poisons the snake, and Eve packs her books and moves out of paradise. The End.’
For those who can handle it, Paradise Rot is quite the surreal descent into decay in order to think of the self at our basest and most unsightly elements. It is a story where you feel like each page must be sticky, that you must be drenched in grime, that your body is rotting and dripping off your bones right there in front of you, yet also one where that suddenly feels like a sort of freedom and opportunity for resurrection into a new and better self. ‘There are two versions of myself and only one managed to get out,’ Jo thinks, lets hope the version of ourselves that manages to survive this novel are better for it.
3.5/5
September 29, 2021
jenny hval do you have a pee kink
August 12, 2022
Addresses the classic lesbian concerns of devouring men, merging, and watersports.
June 21, 2020
This was... bizarre? Insightful? Clever? Feminist? Fantastical? I'm not sure, but I think I liked it.
Joanna has travelled from Norway to attend university in a small Australian town. She finds the people, the attitudes, the soft stodgy foods, and the town itself so different from anything she has ever known before. It is other to her but she, with her serious attitudes and quiet demeanour, is other to it and everyone else around her.
Carral is in temporary employment and looking for a roommate to share her large but oddly-constructed home. Her ex-brewery establishment is made up of thin walls that reach just above head height and allows its occupants to see and hear every one of each other's movements.
The two women become conjoined by this house, which has a beating heart and becomes a central characters all of its own. It is their refuge from the world outside that has no place for them. But its tender embrace soon begins to feel more like slow strangulation as they become ever more removed from reality.
I adored the almost fantastical exploration upon the themes of decay, throughout this book. The story itself mirrored both this central theme and the weakly structured abode that formed the genesis for it, in that the slightest of pressure felt like its entire construction would topple. This is a book that gave to the touch, bruised easily, meaning that no true insight was ever truly garnered and only a dented impression made. I read it over the course of one day but every moment not spent within its page was still spent mesmerised by them. I felt haunted by this book. I felt desired to be haunted by this book.
Another mirror was created between the inhabitants of the house and the reader in that neither was ever allowed to remain on steady footing. The house creaked and rocked around the two women, cradling and tormenting them. The book built its walls around the reader but their shifting patterns and uneven foundations meant there was never a certainty to be found there, either.
Another running theme was that of the fallen women. Sexual encounters and imagery feature throughout. Are we witnessing Eve falling from grace all over again? Or is this new Eve gorging on her apple, taking her fill, and feeling anything but desiring of forgiveness?
There is so much more I could say and I'm not even sure if all I have said is the right interpretation of it. This is a psychedelic read that you should allow to bear you along upon its own meandering path. The book won't allow for any other way.
Joanna has travelled from Norway to attend university in a small Australian town. She finds the people, the attitudes, the soft stodgy foods, and the town itself so different from anything she has ever known before. It is other to her but she, with her serious attitudes and quiet demeanour, is other to it and everyone else around her.
Carral is in temporary employment and looking for a roommate to share her large but oddly-constructed home. Her ex-brewery establishment is made up of thin walls that reach just above head height and allows its occupants to see and hear every one of each other's movements.
The two women become conjoined by this house, which has a beating heart and becomes a central characters all of its own. It is their refuge from the world outside that has no place for them. But its tender embrace soon begins to feel more like slow strangulation as they become ever more removed from reality.
I adored the almost fantastical exploration upon the themes of decay, throughout this book. The story itself mirrored both this central theme and the weakly structured abode that formed the genesis for it, in that the slightest of pressure felt like its entire construction would topple. This is a book that gave to the touch, bruised easily, meaning that no true insight was ever truly garnered and only a dented impression made. I read it over the course of one day but every moment not spent within its page was still spent mesmerised by them. I felt haunted by this book. I felt desired to be haunted by this book.
Another mirror was created between the inhabitants of the house and the reader in that neither was ever allowed to remain on steady footing. The house creaked and rocked around the two women, cradling and tormenting them. The book built its walls around the reader but their shifting patterns and uneven foundations meant there was never a certainty to be found there, either.
Another running theme was that of the fallen women. Sexual encounters and imagery feature throughout. Are we witnessing Eve falling from grace all over again? Or is this new Eve gorging on her apple, taking her fill, and feeling anything but desiring of forgiveness?
There is so much more I could say and I'm not even sure if all I have said is the right interpretation of it. This is a psychedelic read that you should allow to bear you along upon its own meandering path. The book won't allow for any other way.
September 11, 2021
I think I should mention that I have a fever right now, and I'm only 80% sure that this book wasn't a fever dream.
May 21, 2022
the feminine urge to rot into a forbidden fruit (and lots of pee)
September 1, 2025
the reviews are SEVERELY overhyping how “disturbing” this book is which if you’re like me and was pumped to get some disturbing dyke activities, you will be sadly disappointed.
the book is very good though, beautiful prose and the atmosphere is so dream-like you can FEEL it.
but honestly, i don’t see the horror aspect either. if you can get through The Bell Jar, you can get through this. give it a go!
the book is very good though, beautiful prose and the atmosphere is so dream-like you can FEEL it.
but honestly, i don’t see the horror aspect either. if you can get through The Bell Jar, you can get through this. give it a go!
December 29, 2018
Decay is a common theme in literature. Writers often represent collapsing relationships, festering societies, and crumbling morals with mold, soot, and slime. And we all feel the rot as we read the news, see the contradictions of modern life swirl around us. But what if reading a novel felt like watching a crisp apple dissolve into putrid, yet sweet-smelling compost? Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot is a timely warning that the desire to decay is seductive – and dangerous.
Two women, Joanna, a Norwegian woman starting university in Australia and the center of the story, and Carral, a temp worker, live together in an odd converted warehouse. Both are unsure of who they are and where they want to go. They are adrift, unsettled on their careers, their interests, and their sexuality. They see thriving people all around them in class, at bars, and on the streets but feel like foreign objects, always just outsise of the normal.
So they give up. They seek solace in the surety and simplicity of romance novels and daytime TV. They are stuck in their festering warehouse, dwell on rotting apple cores, let moss and mold and mushrooms cover the floor, the counters, and the bathtub. Joanna finds herself bewitched by the damp stasis that Carral lives in and finds it impossible to break free, even when a boisterous man named Pym comes to interrupt their sanctum with his whisky breath and bad poetry. In fact, Pym seems to prove to Joanna that active life is bankrupt and shallow, a false prophet. So Joanna lets Carral pull her in deeper.
Joanna is completely seduced by decay, both by her lust for the emotionally and physically purifying Carral and by her obsession with mycology (the study of mushrooms). In the slimy bathtub, she reads with a beautiful mushroom looking over her shoulder, as if decay is watching everything she does, waiting for her to entirely give up. Joanna finds comfort in knowing that Carral will always be there, in taking care of the beautiful Carral, who is slowly collapsing, a physical representation of the seduction of rot.
But it can't last forever. Carral knows she has to break free, to reject the decay, to breach her comfort bubble, to confront the world and embrace life. And she does, but at what cost? Memories of the sensual pull of decay and death follow her wherever she goes, like mountains of compost attached to her body by strings. Joanna can learn to live again, but the mountains of compost are always there, ready to pull her back in as soon as she stops moving forward.
For those of us susceptible to long bouts of melancholy and emotional paralysis, Paradise Rot is important. Hval shows how powerful the rot can be, how it can seem like a paradise, but calls on us to reject it. That's a lesson I can take to heart.
Two women, Joanna, a Norwegian woman starting university in Australia and the center of the story, and Carral, a temp worker, live together in an odd converted warehouse. Both are unsure of who they are and where they want to go. They are adrift, unsettled on their careers, their interests, and their sexuality. They see thriving people all around them in class, at bars, and on the streets but feel like foreign objects, always just outsise of the normal.
So they give up. They seek solace in the surety and simplicity of romance novels and daytime TV. They are stuck in their festering warehouse, dwell on rotting apple cores, let moss and mold and mushrooms cover the floor, the counters, and the bathtub. Joanna finds herself bewitched by the damp stasis that Carral lives in and finds it impossible to break free, even when a boisterous man named Pym comes to interrupt their sanctum with his whisky breath and bad poetry. In fact, Pym seems to prove to Joanna that active life is bankrupt and shallow, a false prophet. So Joanna lets Carral pull her in deeper.
Joanna is completely seduced by decay, both by her lust for the emotionally and physically purifying Carral and by her obsession with mycology (the study of mushrooms). In the slimy bathtub, she reads with a beautiful mushroom looking over her shoulder, as if decay is watching everything she does, waiting for her to entirely give up. Joanna finds comfort in knowing that Carral will always be there, in taking care of the beautiful Carral, who is slowly collapsing, a physical representation of the seduction of rot.
But it can't last forever. Carral knows she has to break free, to reject the decay, to breach her comfort bubble, to confront the world and embrace life. And she does, but at what cost? Memories of the sensual pull of decay and death follow her wherever she goes, like mountains of compost attached to her body by strings. Joanna can learn to live again, but the mountains of compost are always there, ready to pull her back in as soon as she stops moving forward.
For those of us susceptible to long bouts of melancholy and emotional paralysis, Paradise Rot is important. Hval shows how powerful the rot can be, how it can seem like a paradise, but calls on us to reject it. That's a lesson I can take to heart.
October 24, 2018
A psychedelic biological bisexual allegory ~ moist fantasy
March 8, 2022
Gotta pee now
November 4, 2023
i have absolutely no idea how to rate this book… i’m unsure what I just read to be honest
October 19, 2018
some really beautiful writing but personally didn’t love the plot line - i went in expecting queer horror and didn’t feel like i exactly got it, or in the way i was hoping for. very cool premise and hval’s writing is as dreamy as her music.
Want to read
September 4, 2024honestly i just can't believe how much of what i've heard about this book is piss-related
May 29, 2022
Paradise Rot tells the story of Jo, a young Norwegian woman who moves to a small town in the United Kingdom to study biology. She moves in with quiet and mysterious older girl named Carral, who lives in a strange renovated old brewery.
This little book was so incredibly bizarre, I loved it. I saw a review that simply just said “Books you can smell,” and that is very accurate. It's a book that has a moist, damp feel to it. Something you find buried in the moss in a forest after rainfall. What’s this? Is it covered in piss? Let’s just wipe that away.. Yes this book is full of piss! Urine! Pee! “Golden ribbons!” I had to laugh a little at that one. Jo finds herself in an old brewery turned apartment with the mysterious Carral - the walls are paper thin and you can hear every rustle of fabric, every swoosh of paper from a book being turned, every breath. Smells travel — the sour scent of apples rotting, earthy fungi from the compost. Paradise Rot is certainly a book for the senses. This book gave me the same vibe as Foe by Iain Reid, Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, and possibly the Robert Eggars film The Lighthouse. A little stinky, a lot damp, a lot of naturally occurring body things, and a little gay. It was absolutely incredible. It felt like a creeping, dark, psychological horror, that of a Ingmar Bergman film. I won't say much more because I found it quite enjoyable to read without knowing much and then speculate afterwards. If you’ve read this, lets chat about it! I have so many thoughts.
Overall, this book was extremely unsettling and kind of gross and I just loved it.
This little book was so incredibly bizarre, I loved it. I saw a review that simply just said “Books you can smell,” and that is very accurate. It's a book that has a moist, damp feel to it. Something you find buried in the moss in a forest after rainfall. What’s this? Is it covered in piss? Let’s just wipe that away.. Yes this book is full of piss! Urine! Pee! “Golden ribbons!” I had to laugh a little at that one. Jo finds herself in an old brewery turned apartment with the mysterious Carral - the walls are paper thin and you can hear every rustle of fabric, every swoosh of paper from a book being turned, every breath. Smells travel — the sour scent of apples rotting, earthy fungi from the compost. Paradise Rot is certainly a book for the senses. This book gave me the same vibe as Foe by Iain Reid, Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, and possibly the Robert Eggars film The Lighthouse. A little stinky, a lot damp, a lot of naturally occurring body things, and a little gay. It was absolutely incredible. It felt like a creeping, dark, psychological horror, that of a Ingmar Bergman film. I won't say much more because I found it quite enjoyable to read without knowing much and then speculate afterwards. If you’ve read this, lets chat about it! I have so many thoughts.
Overall, this book was extremely unsettling and kind of gross and I just loved it.
Read
October 4, 2022Adequate amount of piss for me, personally.
April 21, 2023
gross (complimentary)
May 27, 2025
3.5**
go piss girl - but like literally, please go to a toilet
go piss girl - but like literally, please go to a toilet
March 8, 2022
This read like a young first year creative writing student going hard for a mark. Queer baiting, still persevered to the end despite that but not for me
August 20, 2023
lmao what the fuck
[3.75]
[3.75]
March 18, 2024
Paradise Rot is a trippy sensory overload taking place in a rotting Garden of Eden. It’s disgusting, it’s weird, it’s… enthralling. It captures you completely for 148 pages then spits you out disoriented and confused. In fact, this is such a surreal and disorienting book that when I finished it yesterday morning I tried to write a review for hours, failed, then picked up this book at 1am and read it all over again. This book burrowed itself into my brain and has left me in an odd, obsessive state. The world feels louder right now, when I close my eyes all I see is a rotting Garden of Eden, and my brain feels absolutely numb.
The writing creates a nauseating sensory nightmare as the words jumped off the page and I could hear and feel them so loudly. I heard juices dribbling, pulp oozing, muted trickling (yes, of piss). I could feel yolks bursting, a Spanish slug’s antennas tickling the roof of my mouth, something warm and slimy white in my throat, warm spores melting into my skin. I wanted to scream at the girls to please drink some water as I listened to thick milky urine stream against a porcelain bowl and when Jo’s urine was described as acrid. I was horrified and deeply intrigued as various bodily fluids, oozes, and runny substances were described in just a little too much detail. I felt everything and I’m not really sure I wanted to (I actually am sure – I didn’t want to).
“In the hostel my body became light and insubstantial, and I imagined that I, too, was being swallowed by fog, that I was dissolving in it.” / “Maybe it wasn’t the house, but me that was porous.”
Jo has just moved from Norway to Australia for school and due to issues, such as a language barrier and loneliness, she has lost her sense of self. Before she finds the brewery, she is constantly drifting in and out of space feeling like it is impossible to connect with anyone. She finds comfort in the weird and disgusting as experiencing those things tend to transcend this new barrier that she is facing. When something gross happens on public transport in the beginning of the book, instead of being absolutely disgusted she thinks about how everyone is connected temporarily, and once the moment ends, she thinks “They could return to themselves, disappear into their enclosures. I was alone again.” In the outside world this language barrier is pervasive. When trying to explain things to her new friends she has trouble finding the right words, on the first day of class her inner monologue reveals “I became increasingly aware how unprepared I was to study in English.” … “I suddenly knew nothing about myself, nothing seemed right in English, nothing was true.” But when she finds this apartment and meets her new roommate Carral – a native English speaker – she never seems to have this problem. In this inside world, where she is cocooned against the unfamiliar, she feels a safety and familiarity that she hasn’t felt in Australia yet. Her combined fascination with mycology and pretty gross bodily fluids intertwines to produce a very interesting surreal world.
“But the apple was first, and it never stops rotting, it just gets blacker. The apple has no end, just like this fairy tale.”
The catalyst of this story and the introduction to the rotting Garden of Eden is when Carral brings home a bunch of apples, and they start rotting: “Through the drumming, something else could be heard: apple skin against the wood, rolling through the kitchen, back and forth, like eggs ready to hatch.” We get so much imagery of symbolism from these apples that intertwines with Jo and Carral and their desires. As the book progresses, the apples rot further as do Jo and Carral. ”An apple is never just an apple.” As their inner world begins to rot, their desire begins to grow until mushrooms begin to grow and then their desire (especially Carral’s) starts to show itself in very fungi-like ways.
The brewery/Garden of Eden is an interesting place in itself. The moldy it gets, the more languidly we rot in it. There is a safety in this version of Eden, but there is also ruin. This version of the creation myth is also distorted, with a new story for every character. I liked this aspect because, while it was easy to figure out who some characters were meant to be, they didn’t necessarily have the same story. It’s an interesting way to depict a queer awakening/finding yourself story and Jo rushing to escaping the infected Garden in seared into my brain.
“when she turned and lay behind me, firmly against my body, I thought we were synchronized, or I wished we were: that she should dream what I’d dreamt, that she should taste what my mouth tasted.
There are two major transformations that begin to take place in this book, both have two different dynamics. With the neighbor Pym, we see how a male centered view on relationships can literally consume and destroy the woman. In his book, Pym writes about how “two girls took turns satisfying the man’s every sexual fantasy and eventually melted into him.” While claiming that the book is “somewhat feminist”, he shows his true intention of consuming the girls, taking the things that will benefit him, and discarding the rest. Even when him and Jo kiss, either Jo is consuming him and making him shrink, or Pym is doing the same to Jo. There is this dynamic where they only take and never give. Even when she gets physically close to him, he rarely leaves any residue/bodily fluid on her. And when she does feel a lingering mark, she is repulsed.
Jo’s relationship with Carral based on fluids early on, representing this weird desire. In the beginning, Jo is already fascinated by how Carral crushes the sweet flesh of an apple between her teeth and dissolves the flesh into foam and the sound of her peeing. Instead of consuming Jo, Carral desires a conjoining of the two of them. She even adds a new ending to Pym’s story: “From his ashes will a four-breasted creature arise.” This seems to show a different kind of consumption where Carral still wants to meld with Jo but in a way where both of them are equals. They both seem to be consuming each other at equal rates.
Before the storm, we are languidly rotting in a moldy Eden, moving as if we’re in a trance but, when she is awoken to the true dangers of this place, Jo must act before it is too late. There is this sense of urgency and fear towards the end as we watch Jo try to escape the clutches of the brewery.
“I kept going to lectures, and every time I left, it felt like I crossed a threshold between dream and reality, sleep and wakefulness.”
I don’t know if I’d recommend this book to most people, but if you do read this book read it by yourself, in a dark room, between the wee hours of 12am and 5am. A time and space where you’re completely isolated from the outside world and anything can happen.
The writing creates a nauseating sensory nightmare as the words jumped off the page and I could hear and feel them so loudly. I heard juices dribbling, pulp oozing, muted trickling (yes, of piss). I could feel yolks bursting, a Spanish slug’s antennas tickling the roof of my mouth, something warm and slimy white in my throat, warm spores melting into my skin. I wanted to scream at the girls to please drink some water as I listened to thick milky urine stream against a porcelain bowl and when Jo’s urine was described as acrid. I was horrified and deeply intrigued as various bodily fluids, oozes, and runny substances were described in just a little too much detail. I felt everything and I’m not really sure I wanted to (I actually am sure – I didn’t want to).
“In the hostel my body became light and insubstantial, and I imagined that I, too, was being swallowed by fog, that I was dissolving in it.” / “Maybe it wasn’t the house, but me that was porous.”
Jo has just moved from Norway to Australia for school and due to issues, such as a language barrier and loneliness, she has lost her sense of self. Before she finds the brewery, she is constantly drifting in and out of space feeling like it is impossible to connect with anyone. She finds comfort in the weird and disgusting as experiencing those things tend to transcend this new barrier that she is facing. When something gross happens on public transport in the beginning of the book, instead of being absolutely disgusted she thinks about how everyone is connected temporarily, and once the moment ends, she thinks “They could return to themselves, disappear into their enclosures. I was alone again.” In the outside world this language barrier is pervasive. When trying to explain things to her new friends she has trouble finding the right words, on the first day of class her inner monologue reveals “I became increasingly aware how unprepared I was to study in English.” … “I suddenly knew nothing about myself, nothing seemed right in English, nothing was true.” But when she finds this apartment and meets her new roommate Carral – a native English speaker – she never seems to have this problem. In this inside world, where she is cocooned against the unfamiliar, she feels a safety and familiarity that she hasn’t felt in Australia yet. Her combined fascination with mycology and pretty gross bodily fluids intertwines to produce a very interesting surreal world.
“But the apple was first, and it never stops rotting, it just gets blacker. The apple has no end, just like this fairy tale.”
The catalyst of this story and the introduction to the rotting Garden of Eden is when Carral brings home a bunch of apples, and they start rotting: “Through the drumming, something else could be heard: apple skin against the wood, rolling through the kitchen, back and forth, like eggs ready to hatch.” We get so much imagery of symbolism from these apples that intertwines with Jo and Carral and their desires. As the book progresses, the apples rot further as do Jo and Carral. ”An apple is never just an apple.” As their inner world begins to rot, their desire begins to grow until mushrooms begin to grow and then their desire (especially Carral’s) starts to show itself in very fungi-like ways.
The brewery/Garden of Eden is an interesting place in itself. The moldy it gets, the more languidly we rot in it. There is a safety in this version of Eden, but there is also ruin. This version of the creation myth is also distorted, with a new story for every character. I liked this aspect because, while it was easy to figure out who some characters were meant to be, they didn’t necessarily have the same story. It’s an interesting way to depict a queer awakening/finding yourself story and Jo rushing to escaping the infected Garden in seared into my brain.
“when she turned and lay behind me, firmly against my body, I thought we were synchronized, or I wished we were: that she should dream what I’d dreamt, that she should taste what my mouth tasted.
There are two major transformations that begin to take place in this book, both have two different dynamics. With the neighbor Pym, we see how a male centered view on relationships can literally consume and destroy the woman. In his book, Pym writes about how “two girls took turns satisfying the man’s every sexual fantasy and eventually melted into him.” While claiming that the book is “somewhat feminist”, he shows his true intention of consuming the girls, taking the things that will benefit him, and discarding the rest. Even when him and Jo kiss, either Jo is consuming him and making him shrink, or Pym is doing the same to Jo. There is this dynamic where they only take and never give. Even when she gets physically close to him, he rarely leaves any residue/bodily fluid on her. And when she does feel a lingering mark, she is repulsed.
Jo’s relationship with Carral based on fluids early on, representing this weird desire. In the beginning, Jo is already fascinated by how Carral crushes the sweet flesh of an apple between her teeth and dissolves the flesh into foam and the sound of her peeing. Instead of consuming Jo, Carral desires a conjoining of the two of them. She even adds a new ending to Pym’s story: “From his ashes will a four-breasted creature arise.” This seems to show a different kind of consumption where Carral still wants to meld with Jo but in a way where both of them are equals. They both seem to be consuming each other at equal rates.
Before the storm, we are languidly rotting in a moldy Eden, moving as if we’re in a trance but, when she is awoken to the true dangers of this place, Jo must act before it is too late. There is this sense of urgency and fear towards the end as we watch Jo try to escape the clutches of the brewery.
“I kept going to lectures, and every time I left, it felt like I crossed a threshold between dream and reality, sleep and wakefulness.”
I don’t know if I’d recommend this book to most people, but if you do read this book read it by yourself, in a dark room, between the wee hours of 12am and 5am. A time and space where you’re completely isolated from the outside world and anything can happen.
April 25, 2022
In short: frustrating. Far from the unsettling or lyrical novel I was sold on, far more straightforward and on-the-nose in language, imagery, symbolism, and plot than I expected. (The fact that the text goes out of its way to spell out the Eden allusions every time they become relevant becomes absolutely agonizing by the end of the novel, as do the extremely simplistic and didactic commentaries on gender roles.) Spent much of the book banging my head against the proverbial wall hoping it would cling onto any of its most haunting ideas instead of the slight overgrowth lacing its coming-of-age sexuality narrative. The novel, however flawed it does so, ultimately does settle on that mode in its last few chapters, but it only frustrates me further knowing that Hval could've delved into the abstracted imagery and untethered narrative progression earlier and squandered that for a mostly disposable style whose only lingering aftereffect has been one of disappointment for me. A shame to enter excited to finally read this while most prone to being chilled and exiting far more frustrated than a book this short and theoretically up my alley should have made me.
November 1, 2021
Paradise Rot passed me by in a haze, which I suspect may have been - at least in part - the author's intent. Hval is clearly interested in exploring the ontological foundation of this fungal world, but she seems to prioritise the aesthetic elements over all else. The result is a visually brilliant but vacuous story, that ends with as little certainty as it began. While I enjoyed her comfort with provocation, her antagonism of potentially squeamish readers seems to be a pointless exercise, as those aren't likely to be the people who pick this book up in the first place. In the end, Paradise Rot operates far more strongly as a surreal mood piece than the commentary on sexual politics as it purports to be; enjoyable to suffuse myself in, but doesn't leave much to chew on.
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