Hmm. I liked this at first but my interest waned as it went on and became more like a series of surreal, avant-garde film clips. I’m not someone who needs their novels to be linear, but the structure didn’t work for me. It would be better as a film, and it’d probably be a film I wouldn’t watch as I’m too squeamish to watch the sort of things Hval depicts here. Like Paradise Rot, bodily fluids abound and I liked some of the things she had to say about gender & Norway’s deep south. But unlike Paradise Rot, it never came together as a whole for me.

Marjam Idriss does a stellar job with the translation though, especially during all the passages musing on linguistics!

Thanks to Verso for my review copy!