Caly's TOP 5 in 2025 | Paradise Rot - Jenny Hval

Caly says... A putrid bisexual horror reimagining of the original sin. When Jo moves to a strange new country and into an ever stranger living situation the boundaries between what's real and what solid are strangely brought into question. Sensual, thrilling and sticky in all the right places. A brilliantly surreal and symbolic soundscape of a novel. 

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Jo is in a strange new country for university and having a more peculiar time than most. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive as the days pass. Jo's sensitivity and all her senses become increasingly heightened and fraught as the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh.

This debut novel from a critically adored artist and musician presents a heady and hypersensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire.