By Nicholas Alexander Hayes
Jenny Hval’s Paradise Rot is an atmospheric novel. At times, the endemic decay of the environment dominates the lives and movements of the characters. Hval presents a challenging world for us to enter. It is grotesque but not comic, leaving some of her characters in an uncanny valley of rendering which discomfits.
Her characters, Jo and Carral, in particular sprout in this environment almost mushroom-like. The emblem of the mushroom is an apt one. One suddenly appears in the bathroom one day and the allow it to stay almost as a house plant or pet. But this is so much like the young women of the book: Jo the exchange student who shows up in a foreign country looking to study biology but without the context of family and friends to drive her forward to contextualize her; Carral an English literature graduate who now self-consciously reads trashy romance literature when not working her temp office job, living in uncertainty between contracts. They occupy a former brewery that has been partially converted to apartments where grass grows on the floor and moss on the walls.
The narrative drips and seeps through the setting. Longing and failed hook-ups at bars intrude in the middle chapters with an awkward question of whether or not these are truly consensual events. In one scene, Carral’s creepy boss accuses Jo of being a lesbian, while indicating that he is sexually turned on by this possibility. Carral sends mixed signals to Jo who seems unclear about her sexuality. In another series of encounters, Carral begins to sneak into Jo’s bed and sleep with her. The line between homosociality and homosexuality is at time blurred and ultimately breaks down. Jo is strangely sexually compelled by their male neighbor who is the first man she sleeps with. The odd household breaks down when Jo catches Carral and this man having sex.
It is not just their environment that they cannot trust. The biological imperative that is always palpable betrays the autonomy of the characters. Their bodies and desires do not always behave the way that their rational and well-intentioned manners would suggest. Jo’s exploration of her sexuality seems like it might be the most obvious example of this. But the bodily betrayals are much more fundamental. Menstrual blood and urine ruin moments. Even the act of communication is difficult when Jo tries to speak and she finds that the fluency of the language is impugned by the way her body makes the sounds.
Biological processes are thread throughout the narrative providing touchpoints for transporting the characters. One example is the apples that Carral scavenges from the dumpster, at first these seem to be a windfall. The two girls eat. And of course, they symbolically evoke the paradise of the title. But as the novel progresses we watch many apples rot even as they are thrown out, Carral and Jo can never fully get rid of their presence.
The decline of Carral’s intellect, her self-conscious vegetation, also seems to be a parallel process to the biological one. The assumption of critical thinking for school has been abandoned for the social imperative of finding work. The act of reading meaningfully has replaced the act of reading trash. Carral is painfully aware of this decline.
The world these young women occupy is not just. They both struggle to make sense of a space from which they are both alone and alienated. They are both ephemeral transitory beings who linger in a grotesque landscape. Nothing is clean and easy. The awkwardness and grossness of it however gives the story a dreamy ring of authenticity. It is fitting that Carral started coming to Jo in the middle of the night clinging to her as they sleep. Something to touch, to cement themselves to even temporarily.
Paradise Rot
Jenny Hval
Verso
ISBN: 978-1786633835
