Girls Against God

by Jenny Hval, Marjam Idriss (Translator)

At once a time-travelling horror story and a fugue-like feminist manifesto, this is a singular, genre-warping new novel from the author of the acclaimed Paradise Rot

“It’s 1992 and I’m the Gloomiest Child Queen.”

Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her past, her practice and her hatred, things start stirring themselves up around her. In a corner of Oslo, a coven of witches begins cooking up some curses. A time-travelling Edvard Munch arrives in town to join a black 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. Awful things happen in aspic.

Jenny Hval’s latest novel is a radical fusion of feminist theory and experimental horror, and a unique treatise on magic, gender and art.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Feminism, Fantasy, Contemporary, Gothic, Literary Fiction

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 2, 2018

About the author

Jenny Hval (f. 1980) er bosatt i Oslo og har skrivekunstutdanning fra The University of Melbourne. Hun har gitt ut to musikkalbum under navnet Rockettothesky, og et under eget navn. Hun har publisert skjønnlitterære tekster og essays i tidsskrifter og antologiene Ferskvare og Pilot. Jenny Hval er redaksjonsmedlem i Vinduet. Hun ble i 2010 kåret til en av Norges mest nyskapende kunstnere. Perlebryggeriet er hennes første bok.

Reviews

[Barry Shitpeas · Rating 5 out of 5]

yo wtf. norwegian black metal george bataille shit

no idea what i just read. 5 stars. wouldnt recommend

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was exhilarated by this work. I'm not sure what it is. Is it a poem? An essay? A barbaric yawp? I moved forward through the text cautiously, not knowing how to protect myself from my own wild thoughts bouncing off the words on the page. I pretty much loved it. I was confused by it. I was annoyingly disturbed by questions about whether the hard-breaks in the text were meant to be there or were some artifact of me reading this book in digital ARC form, and on a first-gen IPad.

The publisher's description says "the narrative, the essayistic and the magical is organically woven together into a literary text that both genre-wise and by virtue of its content refuses to be boxed in" and that sentence really sums up what I think about this novel, at this moment--because this description from the publisher is irksomely UNGRAMMATICAL (please, dear verso, its 'the narrative, the essayistic and the magical _ARE_ organically woven together) and yet, with work on my part, the publisher's description also seems to mean something exactly like this novel means.

I feel like I was in communion with the semi-raw/half-baked thinking of a very interesting human being who is Jenny Hval.

Good. Try it. I'm going to buy it in book form when it's available so I can at least be sure where the author means to make her line breaks vs. being continuously bemused about whether there is any meaning at all to them, as they appeared in the ARC.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Girls Against God starts as the impassioned monologue of a young woman. Our narrator is from the south of Norway, and detests its bland traditions – 'white taciturn gruel' – and Christian values. As for what she hates most, it's a toss-up between God and the 'broken', 'wet' accent of the region, 'fit only for sermons and admonitions'. She gives an account of her life, running from the early 1990s to the present day. There are ruminations on feminism and witchcraft, porn, art and music; I sometimes felt like I was reading a series of personal essays rather than a novel. That's not a bad thing – the narrator has a striking voice, her ideas about the power of hate are persuasive and interesting, and I felt I was learning something about Norwegian subcultures.

A few themes are repeatedly revisited: a film concept the narrator seems to have been formulating for years; the significance of black metal music in her life; the idea of 'girls hating together', which informs both her experiences and her theories. In the second half of the book, however, the sense that it's a memoir/manifesto is lost. Any illusion of reality breaks down, and scenes become increasingly dreamlike. When the narrator forms a band with two friends (who may or may not be characters she has invented for one of her film scenes), their 'first gig' is not a performance of music but rather inserting a 'razor-thin infected metal thread [into] the city’s main reserves', producing 'metaphysical waste' that creates a 'trash stench' over Oslo. It only gets stranger from there.

A great deal of my interest in Girls Against God was down to the blurb, which positions it as 'a time-travelling horror story and a fugue-like feminist manifesto', and I can't really say I feel the first part of that description is accurate. The manifesto parts, I enjoyed a lot. I'd have liked to keep reading about the narrator's life and ideas. The fragmented nature of the rest left me feeling like I was trying to put a smashed piece of glass back together.

I received an advance review copy of Girls Against God from the publisher through NetGalley.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Maxwell · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book pissed me off so it's going to be hard to not spend time on this review. you can tell she's trying so hard to prove how radical she is here but nothing in this book works whatsoever. every paragraph is the same: line after line of childish musings on subversion, mostly by way of sex or poop. this book is low effort whining and im also just going to do low effort complaining for the rest of this. so, before that, here is my Real Review: it feels like someone going through a creative writing technique to get past writer's block but never actually got past it.

okay complaining time!!! saying that this is confusing or trippy or something is giving it waaay too much credit. juvenile/unfocused/amateur but definitely not psychedelic. she isn't even trying here and compared to her other book paradise rot, i think hval has moved further from finding a voice in this. the free association works better when she more fully committed in the latter parts but it's still exhausting. it's a book that is desperately trying to gross you out, filled with edgy takes, and well-off white women are the only ppl i can imagine seeing the writing about Witches as subversive the way it's written about here.

so within minutes of reading you'll see her use the ultimate childish white person edginess tool, the N-Word. you might find yourself asking "why use this? is this necessary? what does it accomplish? should this white person use the n-word" all great questions, other than the last. her goal seems to align with the general goals of the overall book. she uses the n word for the same reason she constantly talks about porn and poop. she is trying to be edgy, and it's justified to her by vaguely gesturing towards some emancipatory political end or feminism or whatever. those positive themes are both barely even hinted at but there's definitely lots of edginess.

i know im dramatic but you have to read this thing to understand where im coming from after completing this entire thing, so im just going to give an example now. the 3 girls are reading a book on witches, and after literally entire pages describing an impossible volume of cum dried on the pages of their book, hval writes, "it's impossible to describe what the effect might be if we were to rip out the most porous pages of the book, crumble them into the witch's cauldron over a low heat, and then drink a nice cup of tea from the brew."
btw immediately after this, a sentence or two, she describes a scene of ppl eating, then throwing up, then violently shitting on their plates, then smearing the shit on each other and dancing. this is the entire book.

thats probably the best i can describe why i hate this, so now im going to do an impression of this text's voice until i get bored: "taking a shit, it's good. but i dont have time. i must hate. and so i hate shitting. it takes me from my hate, and i am quite fond of hate. sometimes you shit a little piss. and thats God. thats God right there. he is always coming out of your stupid butthole. piss out of you butt, thats how you subvert, me and the girls know all about subversion (we like darkthrone). some buttholes, theyre clean bc they do what those fuckinh pigs want you to do. i dont wipe anymore, and i havent had fiber in years. i need it to be black, my shit that is, and so my unwiped butthole becomes black. black like the H, thats the secret society doesn't let you in on. the silent H that forms our witches' triangle. a web that's invisible, yet felt. but believe me there's no other way. varg vikenes had a shity butt, but they wiped it up, now he is Nothing. at one point it meant something and nobody could believe it was happening. now his ass is clean and i hate him."

[etherealacademia · Rating 1 out of 5]

why is the n word on page 13

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 2 out of 5]

A novel consisting of a seemingly endless train of thoughts of the main character. There's some beautiful writing in there, but I found it quite a slog to get through. I do like me an experimental novel, but this one didn't do it for me.

(Received an ARC through NetGalley)

[Jaidee · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 "billie eilish sang it best" stars !!

Thanx to Netgalley, Verso books and the author and translator (who did an amazing job)!! This was originally released in Norwegian in 2018 and in English in 2020.

Ok to be clear...this little rant is for the first 40 percent as I stopped there !

This is one of the most self indulgent and pointless reading experiences. Reads like a precocious memoir by an entitled fifteen year old who writes instead of cutting herself.

We have this really nihilistic chick who is so world weary. She hates God. She loves the color black. She hates God. She hates her own country (norway)...sort of... but reaps all its benefits. By the way she hates God. Death metal boys used to be hot but now they are neo Nazis so now they are not. She hates God. Jesus too. Norway is not socialist enough. Yes she is a feminist. Maybe a witch too and a devil worshipper. She hates God. Mhmmmm.... Did you know she likes to dance and read about the occult and study film in the USA. Oh no she still hates God. Lets start a band with two chicks she met at an art show....she hates God and church people and she likes to wear black...yes she hates God.

Holy Moses...despite the excellent translation and some really cool observations...this was so fucking boring and pointless. Did you know this chick hates God...

This may have worked as a small book of poetry but as a piece of fiction..well not really....a one star experience but a bonus half star for some very cool sentences and observations...

My darling Billie take it away as I am going to scream if I read another line....

[Ks. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel SEEN.

I have never listened to Jenny Hval's music and know very little about black metal culture per-se, though I was a punk kid in the 90s so I understood viscerally what she was talking about. Don't be scared off if you don't know/care about black metal. It is not about that. It is about hating God, which is to say hating the patriarchal God, which is to say hating what men do to women in God's name.

The book itself is simultaneously a fever dream, a stream of consciousness, and a rigorously researched feminist manifesto. I have never read anything like this. The protagonist is writing a screenplay based on her friends, her band, her coven, who may or may not be real. They do magic, which may or may not be real. They revel in the forbidden without any gratuitous violence, without any sadism, without any sexualization. It is truly a feminist gem.

Now, I would NOT recommend it to most people. This book is WEIRD. It doesn't have a straight-forward narrative. The phrase "I hate God" is mentioned probably a hundred times. I would give this book to a teenage girl wearing all black (yeah-yeah-yeah, it's 18+) but not her suburban mom. It's not a "book that everyone should read." And it's okay. It's a book that I needed to read, and I book that I will go back to.

Thanks to Netgalley and VERSO, one the best publishers ever, for this fantastic novel!

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I should blame the total lockdown we have here since yesterday for my utter lack of focus, or maybe I’m just not smart enough, but I just didn’t get this book. I did like Hval’s Paradise Rot, but Girls Against God (great cover and title by the way) to me felt messy, unorganised and way too bizarre.

[Marie-Therese · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 60%.

This was just unbearably juvenile, repetitive, and poorly written*. There was nothing "transgressive" here and little that felt genuinely feminist. Perhaps something was lost in translation, but at more than halfway through without a single resonant sentence or striking image, and only the promise of more childish foot-stamping and reviewing of other, stronger artists' work, I'm done.

*Haha! I just realized that the witches' scenes reminded me of nothing so much as the "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina", which I also abandoned early on as it had absolutely nothing new or interesting to say about women, witches, transgression, or hate.

[Léa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to even start with this? Jenny Hval has such a unique narrative voice that has yet again left me absolutely astounded. Girls Against God is a story of female rage, discrimination, religion, life, desire and unravelling the roots of patriarchy and capitalism. The discussions and interpretations of female pain, empowerment and terror is one that felt so raw and undoubtedly one of the best representations of womanhood I have ever read. A story within a story. A second person narration that will leave you grasping on every word. The fever dream writing. The religious imagery and its analysis. I am left in absolute awe..

4.75 stars rounded up!

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

In an early version of the film I’m writing, the girl from Puberty is the main character in the story. She’s travelling in a time machine from the 1890s, her own time, to our time. There she’s going to look for Edvard Munch, to crush him, as revenge for painting her. In the story’s opening we’re told that Munch has already travelled through that same time machine, to pursue his dream of playing in a popular black metal band.

Translated by Marjam Idriss from Jenny Hval’s Norwegian original, Girls Against God is from Verso Books, “the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world” and this powerful novel justifies that reputation.

The first person narrator of the novel opens her story, or perhaps her manifesto may be a better term, with:

It’s 1990 , and I’m the Gloomiest Child Queen. I hate God. It feels primitive and pitiful to say it, but I’m a primitive and pitiful person. The screen in front of me shows images from 1990: images of pine trees; the tops, grey sky. The video flickers and the camera sways across a pixelated digital universe. A boy, possibly Nocturno Culto, walks through the forest to the sound of brutal guitar riffs.
…
That year, while Nocturno Culto and his band still play thrash and haven’t really figured out black metal, I hate my way through every primary school classroom, and the teachers’ thick southern Norwegian accent. I refuse to adopt it. I hate its sombre tone, fit only for sermons and admonitions, and southern Norwegians hardly ever utter anything else.

Nocturno Culto (real name Ted Skjellum) being one of the real-life founders of the Norwegian band Darkthrone, part of the early 1990s Norwegian death metal scene that infamously ended in 1993-4 with some musicians in jail for burning churches, two for murder (one of a rival band member) and others veering into Neo-Nazism. Darkthrone themselves largely avoided much of the controversy, although their album Transilvanian Hunger did have some unfortunate promotional material (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transil...), including outsourcing the lyrics to four of the songs to Varg Vikernes, one of those later convicted of murder.

The opening lyrics of the song Over Fjell Og Gjennom Torner feature in the novel in one of the imagined film sequences (see below), which in the translation read:

Over peaks and through the thickets
Through this evil murky wood
Die like a warrior, head on a tree
Slash the flesh. Needles skin deep.

(see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1eMY... for the original – Hval’s, who is also a singer, own music is rather different in style https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXLc3...)

The narrator was too young (and the wrong gender) to be part of this scene, but grew up in southern Norway’s white Scandinavian paradise: white walls, white fresh snow, white painted laminate and white chipboards, white flagpoles and white chalk lines on the blackboard, white cheese and white fish, milk, fish pudding, fish gratin and fish balls in white sauce, white pages in books, white pills in pill boxes, white roll-ups, platinum-blond hair, white brides and white doctors’ coats, meringue and cream cake, Christian virgins from Jesus Revolution with white wooden crosses, Christian grunge, listen, the music sounds like regular grunge, if you just forget about the lyrics, irony, nothing means anything, boys from White Revolution at summer camp, girls who think it’s fine that the boys are racists because they’re hot and because boys will be boys, boys and their Nazi punk songs, listen to this track, the lyrics are so distorted you can’t hear it anyway, listen , the melody’s great, you girls are gonna love it, it’s got acoustic guitar. Sugar and salt are the only spices. Sugar and salt look exactly the same. White revolution and Jesus Revolution, Nazi punk and evangelist grunge, swastikas and purity rings. midmorning gruel, pimple pus, egg whites, cream of wheat, semen.

Rebelling against the social conservatism of the region she ends up in a black metal band in 1998.

The novel has her looking back on this period, and exploring ways to express herself via movies (largely planned and imagined rather than filmed), influenced by the avant-garde scene including videos of Darkthrone:

Isn’t that why the underground , the avant-garde, the B movies and comics and fanzines and black metal originally emerged: to be free of the consequences and this relentless comparison to reality, and to open up to other structures? To the crawling and creeping and hissing and noisy structures? They were able to create space for a different kind of art, a different kind of writing.

The narrator often addresses the imagined (and assumed female) reader, drawing us in to her world:

Maybe writing this film has created a place to meet. Do you also recognise the desire for secret and impossible connections ? Do you recognise the loneliness, could we share in it? Could we get closer to each other? Could you and I and the film be the start of a we? A we which takes the form of an expanding community of girls that hate?

The translation deserves particular praise given how much of the novel revolved around Norwegian words and vowels, even dialect, which Idriss needs to make read naturally to the English-language reader:

Have you thought about how good it feels to say that you hate? That deep a-sound: in Norwegian it’s the mouth’s most open vowel, the one that’s pronounced entirely by a slack jaw, the tone the doctor asks for before instruments are stuck down your throat, or the last tone from the dying and the dead. The A emerges from the underground and the downfall. Southerners say hadår or hadær, depending on how far south or west they are. It’s even more magical than the English hate, softer, saltier, more sheltered and concealed, closer to the kingdom of the dead, Hades. This softer language stretches further down into the deep, into the sea, the underground; the magical dimensions.

And the novel, one that becomes increasingly surreal as the gap between the narrator's real life and her movie scenes seems to blur, ends literally encapsulated in aspic:

Aspic is made from the collagen in the bone marrow of pigs, and I dream it’s also made from our own bones and our own marrow, because marrow is the very best we have to give of ourselves. In the marrow is found the collagen, the creative power, the coherence. The same sounds ring in marrow as in margin. In my language it’s even the same word. In the margins are the experiments, the bonus material, the unwritten scenes, the unused leftovers, a suggestion for a new world, a suggestion for impossible connections. In the margins are the comments, the hope and hate, suspended in the thick, translucent marrow broth.

Aspic is the original internet. Aspic teaches me to write. Aspic is our own man-made blasphemy.

An unusual and unsettling read, but worthwhile. The publisher's description of "a radical fusion of feminist theory and experimental horror, and a unique treatise on magic, gender and art" encapsulates it well, albeit perhaps misses the centrality of misanthropic black metal.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fever dream with occasional moments of brilliance. If you enjoy thinking about black metal and girlhood, this one might just be for you.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't really a novel, or a story. It's more of a series of monologues or streams of consciousness. Which is very much not my usual thing, and for most of the time I was reading this I kept thinking 'okay, just give up and read something else, you're not into it'. But I kept reading, because I somehow was into it. I made 15 bookmarks while reading, and it's not a long book, so clearly there's a lot I wanted to go back to. I loved the merging of 90s angry-girl with filmmaking with black metal with the blandness of small-town Norway with early explorations of the internet. I can't say I'd wholeheartedly recommend this because it really is a weird one, even for someone who likes weird books. But it does have a strange charm.

[Ebony Earwig · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've ever listened to any of Jenny Hval's music then this is a lot like that. It's even written very lyrically in the sense that certain phrases will be repeated from one paragraph to later paragraph to further emphasise what each part is trying to get across... though she does this without sounding unnatural, making the lyricism perfectly conversational and seemingly off-the-cuff, though I imagine she must have redrafted like hell to actually get such natural prose, and obviously there's a lot of credit here due to the translator. I've no true idea how this reads in Norwegian, only what I've learnt from this actual book as to the limits of Norwegian as Hval describe it.

On a personal level I really related to this and all those feelings of growing up, not being quite sure of myself, seeing magic on every corner, and journeying deep into psyche is likely the longest journey I've ever been on... and it's always something that's ongoing but when you're young and in suburbia, back in the 90s when there's no internet to distract you from it, then that journey - for me anyway - was all the more intense and powerful. Nowadays it's more sedate and chilled out.

Lots of interesting stuff in here about the history of witch craft and how it relates to the patriarchy. There is a tendency for female eccentrics to be treated with more derision than their male counterparts, or at least not get as much exposure... and maybe less encouragement. Also it gives me more insight into Jenny Hval's songs which are all of a spiritual and ego driven nature "I am Oedipus" etc.

Anyway, this was fricking great... or I thought it was anyway. I think your mileage will vary on this one.

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very much a book of two halves for me. The first 100 pages I was absolutely in love with it. Just reading about the narrator swanning around Oslo talking about the 90s black metal bands, Edvard Munch and how much she hates God was so brilliant. I was so invested in it and couldn’t stop reading. She was a really crazy and unhinged character who is at university and writing and film - it gave me really strong Monica Ojeda vibes as she had two housemates who were weird as well and it had a strong, eerie friendship group vibe. The setting of Oslo also made it so much better as reading about the city in the context of actually being there whilst I was reading it was such a great experience.

Once it got to the 100 page mark it started to lose its steam a lot. I found that even though there was no plot the first half was still amazing but then the second half took its toll a little. It began to feel a bit forced and as though Hval was trying to write really outrageous things for the sake of it.

Giving it 4 stars because of how great the beginning was but by the end of the book I really felt as though it had completely lost its way. I just wish it had kept up with what it was like in the first half.

[Sasa Gab · Rating 5 out of 5]

“How do you pray without faith?
The only thing I value in my mouth is spit.”

[Isabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surreal feminist horror manifesto. Did it change me as a person? Yes. Could I tell you what it's about? Not really, no. Is it one of my new favourite books? Yes. Would I reccomend it to people in my life? Again, probably not. 10/10

[☾⋆｡ A °✩.⟡ · Rating 1 out of 5]

God, this was awful...Cringe and 'edgy' and trying wayyyy too hard + had absolutely nothing to do with feminism - it felt so immature and juvenile.
Please, can the booktok people google what 'transgressive' actually means!! I am so sick of stuff that tries this hard to be different without any substance or depth being confused with things that are actually innovative and good.

[Leo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea what I listened to. It was just a long rant that I didn't get what the point was. I'm very confused but I think it's a 3 stars because I kept listening to it and I don't think I hated it? A lot of angry discussions about religion, poop and I think a priest made of spaghetti that someone ate up?

[Stay Fetters · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The girls look at their scissors, smile, turn toward each other in pairs and cut each other’s throats in one synchronized snip. Their heads topple off their bodies and massive amounts of red fibre silk paper streams from their empty necks."

Paradise Rot was one hell of a book that was totally rotten to its core and I became obsessed. It was twisted enough to swoon me in the best of ways. Seeing that the same author released a book with an amazingly creepy cover and one of the best titles, I didn’t hesitate to buy this for my collection.

It pains me to say this. Like me in a fetal position on the floor as I hold my midsection, and rock side to side pain. This book wasn’t that good and I almost gave up on it more than I’d like to admit. Too many unfinished thoughts and a storyline that took us nowhere.

This book had a lot going on for it. Norway, black metal, dark forests, witches, and episodes that made your skin crawl. How do you have all of that to offer and lead me nowhere? I felt as if I was lead on a journey and then left out in the wilderness to suffer. It felt like an incomplete book.

Girls Against God wasn’t the book I was hoping it would be. Paradise Rot was so much better and I highly suggest you start there. This was a bummer of a read.

[Abbie | ab_reads]

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!

[Nate D · Rating 2 out of 5]

How could I not be pulled towards this title on the library shelf? As a personal essay-narrative paired against an (unfilmed in this case) film treatment, this has shades Chris Krause's Aliens & Anorexia. Likely self-consciously so. I get the sense that Hval has great taste and solid references, but has not yet completely made them her own or tied them together into something entirey cohesive. So we get teen rebellion, the magic and limitations of black metal, flashes of occult or surreal storytelling which feel more like embellishment than narrative core (or even proper narrative hook), personal history attempting to attain literature. Like most readers, likely, I know Hval mainly as a musician, and I intermittently enjoy her music as I intermittently enjoyed this. But but whereas a scrap of lyric, a sequence of notes, a bit of rhythm and a voice ringing clear, in the right place in the right song, can be everything, pulling all the parts together into a book can be in some ways more difficult. Does she pull it off better in her debut Paradise Rot? Maybe. I may still jump back to that one at some point.

[eerika (taylor's version) · Rating 1 out of 5]

they laugh at me because i'm emo

[hawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

(review to come)

[Peyton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tell me, in your darkness, in your ocean, am I ever there? Have we ever reached each other?

Girls Against God is about a Norwegian woman who wants to become a filmmaker. It feels strange to sum up such a complex, sprawling and nonlinear narrative so simply, but that is the core of story. The narrator of Girls Against God is a radical in the original sense of the term – she goes to the root. Instead of looking to academia and ideology to explain her political convictions, she looks to the basic building blocks of experience – phonetics, color, time, space. In brilliant call-backs to Hval’s debut novel Paradise Rot, the narrator of Girls Against God explores nature and human corporality in a variety of surreal monologues; but this imagery, unlike that of the claustrophobic Paradise Rot, has much broader implications. The narrator and her friends Terese and Venke are not content to confine their imaginations to the goings-on of an apartment. They want to share their vision with the world.

The frequent emphasis on filmmaking and performance art, in a narrative about self-described witches no less, blurs the line between reality and imagination in what could be described as an unconventional magical realism. Towards the end of Part 2, the narrator addresses the reader directly in a brilliant moment that unites all of the points she has made over the course of Part 1. This creates a deeply uncanny feeling of having broken the fourth wall that is unlike anything I have experienced in literature before. The closest thing I could compare it to is Ende’s The Neverending Story.

Girls Against God is surprisingly dense. It took me a month and a half to finish. (For comparison, I finished reading Paradise Rot in one night.) This was partly because the book loses some of its suspense and drags a bit in the last few chapters of Part 1. I was disappointed when the theme of hate, which was so central in the beginning, sort of dropped out of the story unresolved. One of the strongest and most moving parts of this book is how Hval gives voice to the depth of anger that girls in high school feel at the prospect of facing a world full of sexism, racism, and environmental destruction. Girls hating together.

I recommend Girls Against God to anyone who likes weird films, weird music, modern witchcraft, computers, sourdough bread, or angry paintings. Kudos to Idriss for her nearly seamless translation.

Verdict: Jenny Hval needs to become a filmmaker!

[Emily Davies (libraryofcalliope) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is intense. It's hardcore and should be approached with that knowledge. The novel follows the Artist. A girl consumed with HATE. Hate for the Christian evangelicals that smother her in her home in the south of Norway. Hate for the hypocrisies of society and history. Hate for the black metal movement that sought to destroy rather than build. Hate for the way she is forbidden to hate. The novel functions more like a series of musings rather than a plot. Technically the novel follows her at different points in her life from school to grad school to beyond but the focus is not so much what happens but how she feels about what happens. Still, Hval constructs a wonderfully angry little girl and who believably grows and changes while still hating with everything she has. This hate-filled girl is not the cool polished character we see in mainstream media, not the edgy effortlessly cool kid, she is rough around the edges, she is disgusting and messy and horrendous which was great fun to read and engage with. Like I said it is an intense novel. There were sections I absolutely loved. Her disavowal of God and the way the author connects the notions of God and mortal to artist and muse (and even author and character) was amazing. The way Hval used language to make her points was also fantastic to read, especially her fixation on the letter "h" which is silent in white but bold and outspoken in both Hate and Hope. The character obsesses with liberating the subject of one of Munch's paintings, waxing political about the role of women in art history and society at large. These were my favourite parts. But, as I said, this is a hardcore novel. If you enjoy the more extreme side of neo-avant-garde, think Marina Adramović's The Lips of Thomas (1975) or Valie Exports's Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969), then this novel will be right up your street. The over-reliance on faecal matter, blood and other "shocking" things were a bit much for me though. I also felt some of the messages were more confused than others, the section in Japan felt more like orientalism, to be honest. The strongest aspects of the novel were her discussions of patriarchy and the history of witchcraft which were insightful and artfully done, but be prepared for the lurid intensity of the rest of it.

[mons 💿 · Rating 4 out of 5]

“the childhood i have left behind/tried to leave behind is like a metaphysical cesspit surrounding me” she was kinda crazy for that

[lucy 🌀 · Rating 5 out of 5]

my new niche is books that feel like preacher’s daughter by ethel cain

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entnervt auf S. 158 abgebrochen. Der Anfang war noch vielversprechend und schnoddrig-schwarzhumorig. Irgendwann wurden dann nur noch seltsame Filme analysiert, langsam driftet es in gefühlte Halluzinationen ab und das freie Assoziieren bringt die Erzählerin irgendwie immer nur hin zu Fäkalien und Pornographie.
Muss ich nicht weiterlesen, oder?
Worum geht es eigentlich? Wie konnte der ganze Witz vom Anfang so schnell verlorengehen?
Die Norweger:innen wollen mich diesjahr ein bisschen sehr stressen, fürchte ich.
Mehr Edvard Munch und Black Metal beim nächsten Mal, danke!