Carnality in Soulful Disintegration - a Reflection on "Paradise Rot" by Jenny Hval

Paradise Rot is a lyrical work. The poetic tale is of queer feminine desires- the lines between friends and lovers, lust and reverence, imagined and reality, pure versus sinful, ferment and decompose until unrecognizable. In contrast with her second novel, Girls Against God, Paradise Rot is more narrative-focused. The fantasy originates from location and setting, as opposed to internally within characters. Paradise Rot is a microscope; it uncovers connection at its most natural state in a way that is disturbing and succulent. 

Jo, a Norwegian exchange student, finds physical, mental, and spiritual refuge in a converted warehouse with her roommate, Carral. Her boundaryless abode and relationship breed as they adapt to Eden. Themes of sensuality, molder, spatial awareness, botany, and divine female connection, overload and desensitize the reader, adopting them as part of the ecosystem.

Hval convincingly wields magical realism: it is augmentative of the natural state of connection that every being feels innately. The moments of fantastic that disrupt the real world are easily imagined. The plot is constantly in a state of half-awake; it is accepting of the unlikely, finding a place to rest within the discomfort of the unreal. There is not so much an unwillingness as much as an uncaring to regrow these boundaries. Wading through the thick mist of narrative reveals a connection between Carral and Jo that is inhuman, but not inanimate. They tell each other’s memories as their own, develop the same mannerisms and speech patterns, reflections of their surreal obsessions with one another. 

These layers of skin and excess soul that are peeled back to reveal the truth of essence is not an addition to a character, it is an intrinsic revelation. It is something deeply festering within that cannot be exposed to sunlight under normal conditions. These formational friendships build connections that are so gratifying and affirming that they are processed as a life force. It runs through the veins as a bodily fluid, giving energy and protecting from sickness, healing when one begins to rot. Their relationship may feel harmonious, even symbiotic, but it becomes venomous and decaying, leaving the host depleted and overwhelmed. Relationships are erotically charged and watered by intimate nights together and appreciation for the sound of each others’ piss. 

As Jo’s presence settles into her temporary garden, her hearing becomes acute, yet selective. The warehouse breaths, moistening mirrors and laying droplets of spit in the mouths of unsuspecting inhabitants. The sensuality of budding sexual awakening between friends is mirrored in the risqué nature of their personal greenhouse. The apartment suppurates as their brain fog leaks out, creating a separate world of fungi and omnivorous invertebrates. Separate life forms become one, potentially with an individual consciousness, but all part of the same system. They are connected in unseen ways, becoming one another as they crucify to resurrect. An environment in which the original sin can be replicated. The reimagining is putrid while tasteful; tasteful as in “able to taste, exclusively, indefinitely”.  

Despite the dull heartbeat of the narrative, it does more than glance off of death. To appreciate the majesty of life, blackness must stand below to give it structure. Without death, the living has nothing to feed on. For new life to have resources, it must inhale the breath out of another’s mouth. Existence is cyclical, churning inside of the Apple. Just because it is foretold, there is not one marked evil before the other is marked good. Biblical references use the girls as a vessel for their reincarnation, or it halos the Original Sin within us all, making an example out of those damned.  

By the end, the pages are fragile and wet, thick with something unidentifiable that soaked into the paper and thickly strings between your fingers as you turn the page. Hval is quite skilled at making what is conceptually vile into something worshipped, normalized, vitalized. Hval chemically breaks down the rawest state of ourselves and it is morbidly fascinating. It is indigestible, therefore regurgitated into something previously recognizable and fuzzy with truth. To Eve, it still looks like an apple.