Girls Against God
Ratings6
Average rating3.2
15
Ratings6
Average rating3.2
A genre-warping, time-travelling horror novel-slash-feminist manifesto for fans of Clarice Lispector and Jeanette Winterson. Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her work, things start stirring themselves up. In a corner of Oslo a coven of witches begin cooking up some curses. A time-travelling Edvard Munch arrives in town to join a death metal band, closely pursued by the teenaged subject of his painting Puberty, who has murder on her mind. Meanwhile, out deep in the forest, a group of school girls get very lost and things get very strange. And awful things happen in aspic. Jenny Hval's latest novel is a radical fusion of queer feminist theory and experimental horror, and a unique treatise on magic, writing and art. "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
Reviews with the most likes.
I picked this up during a Verso Books sale, and I was not disappointed. I can't even begin to describe the book, which has a point of view that is complex in its structure, as well as the meaning in that point of view being complex. Sometimes it feels like a memoir, sometimes like a movie treatment, and sometimes a wonderful modern deconstructionist story, which on the face of it I usually wouldn't love. But Hval pulls it all off wonderfully, and I want to go back and read it again at some point.
The blurb I read said “time-travelling horror story and a fugue-like feminist manifesto “ Which was not at all helpful. There is no time travel, no real horror (as I understand it - certainly some discomfort perhaps, I can see this giving people the squicks around the feces scenes). I would say this is about art and creation and magic and hate and language. The last 2-3 chapters are very art house film.
