Reviews with content warning for Excrement - Att hata Gud

Reviews tagging 'Excrement'

Att hata Gud by Jenny Hval

28 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

Go to review page

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

Go to review page

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

jesterjaster's review against another edition

Go to review page

i've been trying to get thru this for SO LONG bc i liked paradise rot but this one just isn't for me. some of the prose was great but it spiralled. might've been better as a poetry collection or something bc some parts i did enjoy. also n-word on page 13?? erm.

Content Warnings

chynnia's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

0.75

i get the point of the novel but you gotta be able to relate to more than hating god to like this book. maybe even be a tortured art kid who nobody likes idk. the use of a unnecessary slur on page 13 killed the vibe. there was some nice quotes in this but otherwise, i hated this book.

Content Warnings

camsara99's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

1.5

Content Warnings

rusina's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

Go to review page

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

Go to review page

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

More...