Mollie Elizabeth Pyne

By Mollie Pyne. Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot, translated by Marjam Idriss (Verso Books, 2018) Norwegian musician and artist Jenny Hval’s debut novel, Paradise Rot, published by Verso Books, is a trip. It’s acid(ic), unsettling and luminescent—teetering the fine line that separates psychedelia and paranoia, often slipping into the latter (for me anyway). There, not there, there, not there I read the book very quickly but it consumed me more than I it. Very often it left me breathless.

The ghost girl responsible for this line is Kathy Acker, written in her first novel, her greatest, Great Expectations, published in 1979. A writer of fiction, non-fiction, experimental prose and poetry. A writer of the body, of women’s bodies, of intermingling bodies; of sex and sexuality; of gender; of taboo, art, death; of lust, longing, lies. A writer of writing. To live a life full of holes, of absences, of gaps in identity—or “I”—is a life many women writers before and after Acker have known.

Arguably the most famed of Belgium’s renowned group The Antwerp Six, Dries Van Noten has remained a notable figure in the fashion world over the years. With a career spanning three decades thus far, there is ample opportunity for storytelling – especially since he hit the century mark with his most recent RTW show back in March.