Jenny Hval is the latest songwriter to try her hand at novels, joining the likes of Nick Cave, Gil Scott-Heron and, regrettably, Morrissey
The Norwegian singer-songwriter Jenny Hval has more than dreamily gothic electronic alt-pop in her creative
Arsenal. In 2018, she released her first novel in English: Paradise Rot (Pitchfork called it “stunning”), and this month she follows it with Girls Against God. Featuring witches, schoolgirls and black metal, it is – according to publishers Verso – “a genre-warping, time-travelling horror novel-slash-feminist manifesto”, its opening line reading like the beginning of a particularly gnarly Hole album: “It’s 1990, and I’m the Gloomiest Child
Queen.”
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