Marie
Paradise Rot is a short, strange, and deeply sensory novella. The story follows Jo, a quiet and solitary biology student who moves to a foreign country and finds herself sharing a decaying house with Carral, a woman whose boundaries, both physical and emotional, seem to slowly dissolve. What begins as a story of awkward cohabitation quickly morphs into something much more intimate and surreal. It’s a coming-of-age tale, but one that unfolds in moldy corners and between damp sheets, full of bodily fluids, rot, and a gradual blurring of the self.
Hval’s writing is incredibly vivid and sensory: you feel the dampness, the stickiness, the scent of compost and overripe fruit, the heaviness of warm, moisture-laden brewery air. It often flirts with the grotesque, with recurring images of decay, bodily excretions, and a house that seems as alive and watchful as its inhabitants. There’s a lot of piss and rot in this book—there’s clearly some symbolic weight to it, maybe linked to bodily discovery and transformation, but I’ll admit some of it went over my head.
At times, the whole book feels like a fever dream, or like drowning slowly in a humid mattress that smells of mushrooms and sex.
I was particularly struck by how the book portrays male presence. The male gaze here is invasive, unsettling, something to be peeled off the skin. In contrast, the intimacy between Jo and Carral feels organic, overwhelming, and hard to define, melding self and other until their identities blur.
Paradise Rot is a quick read, but a dense one, sticky and alive with sensation, perfect to devour in one sitting on a hot summer night when your own skin feels too close. It left me feeling disoriented, slightly grossed out, and strangely moved.
Paradise Rot is a short, strange, and deeply sensory novella. The story follows Jo, a quiet and solitary biology student who moves to a foreign country and finds herself sharing a decaying house with Carral, a woman whose boundaries, both physical and emotional, seem to slowly dissolve. What begins as a story of awkward cohabitation quickly morphs into something much more intimate and surreal. It’s a coming-of-age tale, but one that unfolds in moldy corners and between damp sheets, full of bodily fluids, rot, and a gradual blurring of the self.
Hval’s writing is incredibly vivid and sensory: you feel the dampness, the stickiness, the scent of compost and overripe fruit, the heaviness of warm, moisture-laden brewery air. It often flirts with the grotesque, with recurring images of decay, bodily excretions, and a house that seems as alive and watchful as its inhabitants. There’s a lot of piss and rot in this book—there’s clearly some symbolic weight to it, maybe linked to bodily discovery and transformation, but I’ll admit some of it went over my head.
At times, the whole book feels like a fever dream, or like drowning slowly in a humid mattress that smells of mushrooms and sex.
I was particularly struck by how the book portrays male presence. The male gaze here is invasive, unsettling, something to be peeled off the skin. In contrast, the intimacy between Jo and Carral feels organic, overwhelming, and hard to define, melding self and other until their identities blur.
Paradise Rot is a quick read, but a dense one, sticky and alive with sensation, perfect to devour in one sitting on a hot summer night when your own skin feels too close. It left me feeling disoriented, slightly grossed out, and strangely moved.