Girls Against God

A Novel

By: Jenny Hval, Marjam Idriss - translator

Narrated by: Gabrielle Baker

A genre-warping, time-traveling horror-novel-slash-feminist-manifesto for fans of Clarice Lispector and Jeanette Winterson.

Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows, and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her work, things start stirring themselves up. In a corner of Oslo, a coven of witches begin cooking up some curses. A time-traveling Edvard Munch arrives in town to join a death-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. And awful things happen in aspic.

©2018 Forlaget Oktober; Copyright 2020 by Marjam Idriss (translation) (P)2021 Tantor

Not great but has redeeming qualities

WTF did I just listen to? I didn’t like this but I also didn’t hate it. It’s really weird, but not in a good way. However, the author does a couple of things really well.

The first, is setting up the tension that those of us who acknowledge and enjoy our darkness feel with the pressure to meet society’s “whiteness”.

Second, the way she writes you can feel the confinement of living in a conservative Christian community, especially if you don’t relate to that community. These are two things that I can relate to about this book.

Unfortunately, the rest reads in a very scattered and disorganized fashion.

Very Intimate Reading

I was hooked from the beginning, as a Clarice Lispector’s fan I could navigate easily through the style of writing, which for most is a love/hate relationship. While reading my kindle was showing how long it was left till the end of the chapter, but somehow I thought it was till the end of the book, when the first chapter finished I thought it was the end of the book and I was pretty satisfied, lol. The book continued spiralling inwards, a full-on writing acid trip full of insight and “wow” moments. I decided to keep notes from the “recommendations” of books and arts, in between readings I was watching the movies and checking the paintings which made the experience so much more memorable. This book, for me was not about the plot, but about the picture it painted in my mind, the symbols it evoked, and?

A Fascinating Voice that edges too close to the Absurd

My best summation of this author’s work is: it’s like meeting a person at a party you find captivating and want to listen to but by the end of it you’re trying to find any excuse to duck out and leave. But she just keeps talking your ear off. I enjoy her voice, I do. I read Paradise Rot too. She’s intelligent and deep but she loses her way with her obsession with fluid and excrement kink (in both works). And lines like (and I paraphrase slightly): it’s reminiscent of a veterinarian’s hand up a cow’s butt and out comes a chicken, are mot profound. It negates good, real points she’s making and makes her “that crazy intellectual” stereotype to moderate audiences. And come on, she has an intense bathroom kink that she tries to incorporate into everything just because she loves talking about it. I’m sorry I don’t need to hear about smearing it all over and pretending it has deep meaning. Still I gave it 4 stars (3.5 really) for creativity, a strong voice and bold choices.

A Beautiful Novel!

This is definitely one of my favorite novels of all time. Such an uncanny and beautiful work. The narrator has an accent that perfectly suits this Norwegian author,