Feb 11

Feb 11 Book Review : Jenny Hval - Girls Against God (2018)

Metal and literature are two things I cover on this site that almost never overlap. Iron Maiden is making music about classic books and Apocalypse Party publishes books with an overall metal feel to them, but they’re exceptions. You'll understand that I felt charmed by Girls Against God from the first page where her protagonist is watching a Darkthrone DVD and pondering the poetics of hating God. The rest of the novel didn't disappoint either. Jenny Hval, I see you. Consider yourself noticed and consider me interested in what you have to say.

Girls Against God tells the story of an angry young Norwegian woman rebelling against the religious conformism of Southern Norway. She starts a black metal band with schoolmates, becomes obsessed with a painting by Edvard Much and manages to bend the nature of her reality. Sometimes it’s a novel, sometimes it's a manifesto where Jenny Hval shares her ideas through he unnamed characters who might a well be herself. It's nimble, unpredictable and never ever boring. That I promise.

Music As A Rebellion Against Death

So, this is basically an aggro and satanic Josie & the Pussycats. The standout moments are the passages where the distance between Jenny Hval and her protagonist becomes blurry and it feels like the author is hijacking her own novel. She notably explains that the conformity and obedience of Southern Norway religion are a form of death to her, where her self disappears behind social expectations. The narrator is existing through rebellion, which is a very rock n’ roll idea, except rebellion has a different meaning here.

The narrator wants to hurt. She wants to embrace the self-destructive violence of making art and the iconoclasm necessary to redefine her social landscape In the immortal words of Glen Benton, she wants to (symbolically) kill the christian. By doing so, she crafts her own relationship with the sacred through her own writing and somewhat through her radical appreciation of Edvard Munch’s painting Puberty. She calls the shots. She won't be told what to like and who to love. What is real and what is not.

I know this might sound like mumbo jumbo if you haven't read the novel, but there's something extremely liberating and empowering about reading the story of a young woman refusing her reality and literally creating another one for herself. The last fifty pages of Girls Against God is literally a movie the narrator has shot with her bandmates in order to remap her world. It's perhaps the only weak spot of the novel as it isn't anchored in anything else that already happened, but it's quite the statement.

The Meaning of Metal

Girls Against God is a good example of what I mean when I tell people that metal is more than just a style of music. That it's a way of being. The narrator is inspired by a Darkthrone DVD extra at the start of the novel and begins seeking extremes as a way to broaden her horizons, empower herself and access the sacred. Music is the tool metalheads use in order to make it happen. The motive is the same for all of us: a refusal of reality as is. The overpowering need to create a netherworld where we can thrive.

In that sense, Girls Against God and her assault on the rigid conformity of South Norway's christianity is a wonderful call to arms for any marginal who feels dissatisfied with the place they've been given in the world. Sure, it's somewhat of a violent novel, but its brutality is mostly symbolic. You need to destroy the old in order to create the new. That's what art is for. That’s why people listen to metal: as a way to safely bridge the gap between what is and what could be. Jenny Hval just nailed it. I felt seen.

I loved this novel. Any time I open a book nowadays, it's to find bold, marginal and groundbreaking stuff like this. As it was the case with perhaps my favorite novel ever, it's not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. In fact, I suspect that a majority of you that will try Girls Against God might even hate it, but it's by design. You'll either "get" it or you won't. I thought it was wonderful. Not only Jenny Hval is talented, but I think she has the creative vision and the marginality to stand out and redefines that reality she hates so much.