Girls Against God - Jenny Hval

[troisoiseaux]

Finished Girls Against God by Jenny Hval, which is more like a collection of increasingly bizarre vignettes than a novel— I didn't know, going into this, that Hval is a musician apparently best known for trippy feminist concept albums, but this was in fact basically a trippy feminist concept album as a book. To be honest, it got a bit too weird for my tastes by the end - at least once in a burst-out-laughing "WTF??" way - and I kind of wish she'd done more with time-traveling Edvard Munch and the vengeful teenage model of his painting "Puberty" since this was one of the things in the blurb that had piqued my interest, but there were some stand-out scenes and, overall, I liked how reading this felt like being pulled along a current, from idea to weird tableau to resonant idea.

Comments

[sovay]

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.

That does in fact sound like a plot thread in the blurb! I am sorry it raised your hopes.

[troisoiseaux]

To be fair, it's a hard book to try to summarize!