Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - Perlebryggeriet

Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

Perlebryggeriet by Jenny Hval

8 reviews

ed_moore's review against another edition

challenging mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Hval’s ‘Paradise Rot’ is a story of the sexual awakening of Jo, a Norwegian exchange student, after she finds a housemate in a converted brewery with little private space in it due to limited and paper thin walls.

It was quite an uncomfortable book. Hval’s use of description is extremely intimate and makes constant sexual innuendos, often making comparisons for the sake of description between things that really shouldn’t be and are quite uncomfortable, such as piss as warm milk for example. She really loved describing scenes of characters pissing for some reason…

There is connections made to Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ both in the title and frequent links to the Genesis story, though it wasn’t much of a retelling and instead just contained many food descriptions and a microcosm of rotting fruit throughout which was an interesting element at least. The space of the novel felt very liminal and uncomfortable, which is both down to its weird nature but also was contributed to by how awful the narration on the audiobook I read was. The narrator spoke so slowly with so little expression, it sounded a lot like an AI though I don’t believe this was the case.

I didn’t particularly find any of the characters that likeable, the male love interest/ antagonist Pym was a disgusting man who made every scene with his involvement a generally unpleasant experience. I don’t know what I expected from this book but it was just unsettling, and not in a god way, in addition to being full of questionable description.

Content Warnings

melodyseestrees's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

woods_corinne's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

This is a weird book, and parts of it really activated some body horror for me, which is pretty unusual for me. It is a deeply descriptive book, but not a lot of plot things happen.

Content Warnings

pixie_dust's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book felt like a surreal rollercoaster ride with a hint of pee and rotten apples. It's not my cup of tea per say, but I kept reading because I felt curious of what's gonna happen next. Needless to say, this book is hard to recommend to other people.

Content Warnings