Sensual dynamic between two young women

Jo a Norwegian narrator and biology student, struggles to find her  niche in the fictional city of Aybourne. As Jo is studying abroad where everything feels alien to her including the slippery and fluid food.

“ I remember everything at home as being textured, here I chewed and only the sugar crunched”.

The book first published in Hval’s native Norway as Perlebryggeriet which literally means pearl brewery. The Old brewery building that fermenting everything in it as rain drips through cracks in the tin roof, white moss begins to cover the floor, and a mushroom sprouts by the bathtub,  While  living there Joe and Carral’s  read proper books as a literally student to trash like the erotic romance Moon Lips in which she’ soften engrossed.

Carral brings home a carrier bag spilling over with discarded apples. Some are eaten: “I took a bite of a Bloody Ploughman.. “ it looks sinful. I bet that was the apple Eve ate, you know, in the Bible, the forbidden fruit”.

 Jo makes little circle-shaped nail mark in the middle of the yellow apple as the edges had already dried up and tear was brown, a small dark nipple in the golden skin. My fingers smelled of yeast.”

As in a dream the closeness of this world to our own leave us looking at everything anew.

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval translated by Marjam Idriss, Verso £9.99/ $16.95, 160 pages.