Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Paradise Rot

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

100 reviews

samanthaleereads's review against another edition

3.25

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

librarymouse's review against another edition

3.75

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Similar to her later book Girls Against God, Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot queers the human body through its association with decay, excrement, and bodily fluids. The whole book reads as a fever dream and ends with Jo having moved out, struggling to remember the details of Carral, rotting and sick from their shared apartment. Time moves slowly in the narrative, but the passing of time is denoted by the rotting of the apples that their relationship was predicated on. The thread of Carral's com-het, and the consistent creepiness of their writer neighbor managed to sustain the majority of the dread in the novel, whereas the anachronistic mushrooms and the motif of rot served as an addition of surrealism. Aspects of the novel are frustratingly relatable as a renter with landlords who don't take care of mold problems. As a librarian, Carral's desecration and theft of a library book are more frustrating than markers of the illicit.

Content Warnings

aliciawithoutkeys's review against another edition

3.75

dark mysterious medium-paced

Content Warnings

archarlton's review against another edition

3.75

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

ed_moore's review against another edition

2.0

challenging mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Hval’s ‘Paradise Rot’ is a story of the sexual awakening of Jo, a Norwegian exchange student, after she finds a housemate in a converted brewery with little private space in it due to limited and paper thin walls.

It was quite an uncomfortable book. Hval’s use of description is extremely intimate and makes constant sexual innuendos, often making comparisons for the sake of description between things that really shouldn’t be and are quite uncomfortable, such as piss as warm milk for example. She really loved describing scenes of characters pissing for some reason…

There is connections made to Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ both in the title and frequent links to the Genesis story, though it wasn’t much of a retelling and instead just contained many food descriptions and a microcosm of rotting fruit throughout which was an interesting element at least. The space of the novel felt very liminal and uncomfortable, which is both down to its weird nature but also was contributed to by how awful the narration on the audiobook I read was. The narrator spoke so slowly with so little expression, it sounded a lot like an AI though I don’t believe this was the case.

I didn’t particularly find any of the characters that likeable, the male love interest/ antagonist Pym was a disgusting man who made every scene with his involvement a generally unpleasant experience. I don’t know what I expected from this book but it was just unsettling, and not in a god way, in addition to being full of questionable description.

Content Warnings

melodyseestrees's review against another edition

3.75

dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

theelizabethjoy's review against another edition

3.0

challenging emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was a difficult book for me to get through due to the body horror, descriptions of rot, multiple instances of someone pissing and the main character describing the sound and or smell and or feel of the urine.

Content Warnings