Paradise Rot: A Novel

it’s a pretty good book. not good enough to read again in my opinion but if you like trippy/unreal type of books i’d definitely give it a go. though i noticed the subject of pee kept getting brought up which made me musky uncomfortable. good book though.

Paradise Rot is the story of Jo, a shy Norwegian girl, newly arrived in Australia to study biology at university. She shares an apartment in a converted brewery with Carral, a peculiar and mysterious woman working as an office temp.One day Carral brings home a large bag of overripe apples that have been discarded by a local grocery store and, as they slowly rot, the apartment morphs into a surreal terrarium of humidity and fungal growth. Even though Jo is intensely drawn to Carral, she drifts into a half-hearted affair with Pym, a male neighbor, until Carral becomes inexplicably ill, forcing Jo to acknowledge her attraction so she can devote herself to her care.This is sort of a contemporary re-telling of the Garden of Eden/Fall of Man story – Carral bringing Jo the apples as a prelude to her sexual awakening and, as the apples decompose, the apartment’s transformation into a corrupted, rotten garden. And, while author Jenny Hval would surely take issue with this comparison, her novel seems to share some DNA with Darren Aronofsky’s art house horror film, “Mother!” Firstly, despite the fact that nothing overtly horrific happens, this has the vaguely menacing feel of a classic gothic horror novel. Plus, like “Mother,” its can also be interpreted as a cautionary environmental fable, with the brewery apartment playing the role of a festering paradise run amok with Carral, as Mother Earth, withering away from illness and neglect.This short, cerebral novel is short on plot, but long on atmosphere. It left me thinking many days after I’d finished it.

Few titles are quite as fitting as PARADISE ROT. Jenny Hval's short novel tells a late coming-of-age story of a woman living in a situation that is at once beautiful and disgusting. Warm kisses and moss. Fresh fruit and urine. Sexuality and decay. Hval's writing isn't as far ahead of the pack as her music but, make no mistake, this novel is confidently crafted, the way you'd expect coming from such an accomplished artist.Paradise Rot makes an impression in its short 150 ish pages and, though I suspect the story itself will fade in a few years, the images Hval conjures are going to be with me for quite some time.

This was an interesting read. The further along the book goes, the less...human, sane, sober, realistic Jo becomes. This obviously has to do with the mold and moss and fungi growing in their living space, but it also has to do with the search of self that she constantly seems to find herself on. She's so unsure about everything to do with herself and that shows in kind of a breakdown of function. The cover artwork is beautiful, and the writing is so vivid that it's almost hallucinogenic. While a strange read, it's almost beautiful.

Norwegian college girl Jo arrives in Australia to spend a year studying. Looking for a place to live, she comes across Carral’s ad for shared space in a “converted” brewery. I have quotes around ‘converted’ because it’s not really made fit for human dwelling. There are few walls put in. The bathroom is on the ground floor, and it has no ceiling- awkward when you consider that the place is two or three stories tall. Everything is just a jumble of coming apart steel. It smells of its former life, as well as of urine. Urine is a theme in this story; it comes up with discomforting frequency. But Jo settles in. Carral brings home a huge number of apples, which they can’t eat fast enough, and so start to rot all over the brewery. Slowly, a relationship develops between Jo and Carral. Mushrooms appear on the bathroom wall. The apples mark the fall of this smelly Garden of Eden.This story has the feel of a horror novel without ever quite going there. I kept expecting the mushrooms to start growing on Jo or something. I found it extremely creepy, especially how Carral descends into a sort of human rot. I wasn’t sure if some of the descriptions were actually happening, or hallucinations brought on by how gross the brewery was. It’s totally surreal, rather like Lovecraft brought into the modern age. Three stars.

The first four pages were just missing form my copy upon arrival.

a novella of a young woman attending college in another country, an english speaking country. she’s from norway. the story traces her search for an off-campus apartment, and the place she finds, moving in with the young woman who advertised for a room-mate. the apartment was constructed from space in an old brewery. no lingering trace of hops or malt, but rotting decaying apples play a major part in the story. not much happens, one woman attends her biology class and when in the apartment reads a biology text and a cheap romance novel belonging to the other woman who holds down a job. when the working woman is not working, she’s isolated in her apartment. the final chapters are one woman’s descriptions of her dream vignettes, which read like scripting of a musical video. a moderately interesting story, symbols abound with like symbols but never coalesce into anything for either woman, or the story overall. i hadn’t heard of the author until locating her website and music videos. her music videos are popular.

this book is nothing like i’ve ever read before. super interesting take and very weird in the best way possible

Das Buch ist auf englisch, aber meine Bewertung ist trotzdem auf deutsch.Es ist ein relativ kurzes Lese-erlebnis, die Charaktere sind nur spärlich beschrieben, die (geringe) Handlung und Atmosphäre stehen im Vordergrund. Die "Flachheit" der Charaktere kann ich bei diesem Buch jedoch nicht kritisieren, da übermäßig lange Hintergrundgeschichten den Flow von dem Buch gestört hätten.Jenny Hval schafft es, Gerüche, Geräusche und Empfindungen aufs genauste zu beschreiben, wenn auch es oft schon fast "eklig" wird. Das "Eklige" verleiht jedoch dem Buch seinen Charme, zum Teil wirkt es schon so als würde man die verrotteten Äpfel riechen und schmecken. Man hört das Hallen und die dumpfen Geräusche in dem sehr alten Brauerei. Für mich ein außergewöhnliches Buch, was es aber durch seine Bizarr-heit einzigartig gut macht

The fantasies and allegories spun in this book don’t take you anywhere, try as they might. You don’t feel an attachment to any of the characters, their backstories are basically non existent, and even after reading the entire thing I never found a reason to care about the protagonist or anybody else, they all felt so devoid of personality. The reason I gave 2 stars instead of 1 is because it was a short read that was easy to pick up wherever I left off, even if I couldn’t remember the previous passages. I’d come back to it whenever I needed a short distraction or to fall asleep, so for that I appreciate it.

Weird piss kink but overall good