Reviews with content warning for Body horror - Girls Against God

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Girls Against God by Jenny Hval

21 reviews

trouvant's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

4.5

I don't desire total freedom, or total misanthropy. ... I desire magic, the same alchemical reaction that transforms hatred to a new or strange form of love.

It's pretty difficult to review this book; it hardly feels adequate to just say that I loved it. Here as in all things, Hval defies tradition, convention, and categorization, giving us a look at the world through her narrator's eyes in a beautifully written stream of consciousness that mixes manifesto, essay, and novel into an intoxicating witch's brew. At first, her song-like prose lulled me into flying through the first few sections, but I really started to enjoy it more when I slowed down, chewed and savoured it, because it's not just all-vibes, no-plot: it's a work very dense with meaning, feeling, and insight.

I had a lot of fun reading and engaging with the reflections here: about magic and religion as art, about the tendency for subversive movements to reinforce what they subvert, about community, about gender, about hierarchy, about possibilities for the world that our language and social structures make unthinkable. There are some transgressive limit-experience explorations here as well, and it can get a bit gross, but it's not the revolting onslaught you find in Bataille (who is referenced), and these explorations are mercifully short.

I think that many women, queer people, artists, and those who have endured oppressive religious childhoods will find a lot of their thoughts and feelings given powerful expression in these pages. One of many such passages that resonated with me:

I'm so sick of being a soul that can be converted or improved or healed, or that's dangerous and needs to be stopped from contaminating others. Give me a salvation break, I'm exhausted. I want to be in a place where I don't have anything to hate; I want to be that place, a place that can't be manipulated, conversed or converted. I want to be a thing, a series of things, things without religious potential. I want to be out of God's reach.

Content Warnings

dizzzybrook's review against another edition

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dark funny 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

Content Warnings

angel_kiiss's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

rusina's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.0

Content Warnings

saint_eleanor's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

God isn't the one writing anymore; its all the girls sitting inside paintings, hating. I'm looking for us.
I write a satanic pact between you and me. THE END.

I could talk about this book for literally hours, would not be able to fit all my thoughts into a review. If you want to talk abt it message me on discord honestly lol (pickledfishxoxo). I would love to know your thoughts on the closing quote, and

what the thick mass is, and who she is writing to. I think that it's an extension of the earlier quote "Tell me, in your darkness, in your ocean, am I ever there? Have we ever reached eachother?" and she is still "looking" for the 'hating' girls, saving them from the darkness/void of their paintings. She's reaching across time and space to rescue them.

In place of an actual review and bc im extra i made a list of every explicit and implied reference in the book and some I just thought would be good further reading because I loved this book sm and i think part of why is bc she referenced so many of my favorite medias 🤓:

Books:

Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
Malleus Maleficarium - Hammer of witches
Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
Powers of Horror: Abjection - Julia Kristeva

Movies:

Wild Strawberries
Daisies, + Vêra Chytilovà movies
American Beauty
Penda's Fen
Jubilee
Sweet Movie
Citizen Kane
Insignificance
Love Exposure / Noriko's Dinner Table ("an episode", p.32, girls jump onto the subway tracks)
Wicker Man (p.120, the ram appearing in the circle of naked women)
Agnes Varda movies , Cleo from 5 to 7
Hausu (p.187 reminded me of it, when they are tossing something 'neither cabbage nor soccer ball', like a head maybe)
Men (p. 199, when nocturno culto is giving birth)

Art/Music:

Pubertad - Edvard Munch 🎨 and The Scientists
Nocturno Culto/ Darkthrone 🎶
Hellhammer 🎶
Rodin 🎨
Dan Graham 🎨
Jenny Holzer 🎨
Ann Sofi's Fideicommunism 🎨
Otto Meuhl 🎨
Meredith Monk 🎶
Varg Vikernes - Burzum 🎶 (nsbm, so watch out)
A-positive by Eduardo Kac (image of man and machine nursing eachother, p. 146)
The Collapse of PAL - Rosa Menkmen (No christians see trees fall in this digital forest. p.180)

Other:
Anders Breivik (?)- norweigan terrorist, Friedrichshof Commune, DWeb vs. ARPANET, Jacques Derrida- Algerian-French philosopher, Luce Irigaray- French philosopher and linguist.

Content Warnings

mariball's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

2.5

“Strangely, it gives me hope, hope that it’s possible to make art primitively, in a way that isn’t steeped in professionalism and compromise. Art that still hates. I remember how much hope there is in hatred.“
This was one of the most surreal books I’ve read in some time, maybe ever. If you’re looking for a traditional story format with plot, you’re not going to get it here. This is an experimental treatise that focuses on art, Black Metal music, magic, witchcraft, religion, nonconformity, and writing. The prose is powerful, direct, gross, and, well, hateful. It’s my favorite aspect of this book.
However, I think this book is too experimental for my tastes. There are some scenes where I question the necessity of its inclusion (besides shock). I feel that at least 50 or so pages could have been shaven off and nothing major would have been lost. I’m also deeply disappointed

that the adventure of the murderous subject of Edvard Munch’s Puberty and her mission to kill him didn’t pan out as a subplot like the blurb implied

. And while I appreciated the narrator’s unique voice, at the same time it also borderlined on angsty edgy teen cursing the world- which made sense in some passages talking about her youth but when you’re an adult and still acting like that it will induce some eye rolls.
In the end, my expectations were too high.

Content Warnings

musical_alex's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.25

Content Warnings

imrereads's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

2.5

Her har eg veldig blanda kjensler. Fyrst og fremst levde dette på inga måte opp til Perlebryggeriet, som eg elska. Det er ein del eg lika godt her, den draumeaktige kvaliteten, linjene mellom hekseri og teknologi, den skiftande tidslinja. Eg tykkjer det er teke opp interessante tema, til dømes tenkte eg mykje på dette med at eg-personen hatar gud, i motsetting til å ikkje tru på gud.

Samtidig er det store delar av romanen som står som uforståelege for meg. Det var rarare og rarare jo lengre me kom, utan at eg klarte å forstå kva det var som vart forsøkt sagt. Kanskje er det ikkje riktig av meg å leite etter meining, kanskje er det det meininglause som er meininga. Likevel falt ikkje det heilt i smak for meg. Dei store mengdane avføring, mensblod og groteske seksuelle bileta falt heller ikkje i smak hos meg. Det er òg uforståeleg for meg kvifor det var nødvendig å nytte rasistiske ord, som n-ordet.

Alt i alt føles dette litt uferdig. Den sterke stemma eg las i Perlebryggeriet var vanskeleg å finne her, sjølv om den dukka opp i blant.

Content Warnings

owenwilsonbaby's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

3.0

‘Maybe it’s because it’s important to me that what we do should mean something, that language should be able to find different strategies and be something other than a machine for shame and denial.’

This had some extremely interesting theory, such as the witches-as-a-threat-to-the-establishment passage, but ultimately I think it was too theoretical in its overall approach to character and narrative. Admittedly I don’t think Hval was going for something conventional here and I do think her writing is very clever and imaginative. Ultimately this wasn’t an excellent choice to help me get out of my reading slump - but hey, that’s on me!

Content Warnings

macodi's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Content Warnings

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