A curiosity of a novella provided by Dad and translated from Norwegian. The title hints at the contents: a modern reworking of Adam and Eve (or Eve and Eve), a loss of innocence and coming of age. As with fruit, Hval seems to suggest that infatuation and passion are transitory and can also decay rapidly. I felt the work didn't really cohere: too much allusion, the exposition of desire somewhat crude, and the reader constantly forced to shift between “dream and reality, sleep and wakefulness” (page 102). I thought Hval was better on how Joanna, the narrator, experienced the anonymity of a new and unfamiliar, albeit fictitious, city as a student away from home. Generously, some suggest Hval is to 21st-century Norwegian culture what Munch was a hundred years earlier. By all accounts she is apparently a talented musician, but I will be offering this work to the charity shop.
By Jenny Hval