ralentina reviewed Paradise rot by Jenny Hval
A queer gross romance
3 stars
A coming of age queer novella, about a Norwegian girl moving to the UK to study, and falling in love with her flatmate. A familiar plot (from other books as well as real life), reworking all the tropes that one would expect by mixing in a touch of horror and good doses of rot. The disgusting details are in fact very plausible in the English flatshare setting: rotten food, uncomfortably non sound-proof rooms, mouldy bathrooms, but described as there was something supernatural about it, which is probably how an crushing twenty-something would experience them. In Kweerlit circles, there were a lot of feelings about the straight dude working a catalyst for the lesbian romance (if romance it was), but certain cliches resonate too much to be dismissed as problematic.
