Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Norwegian by Marjam Idriss

Biology student Jo arrives into an English university town where the only accommodation she can find is a flatshare in a former brewery warehouse., with no permanent walls, and where every sound is amplified.

With the introduction Hval has created an atmosphere of uncertainty, transcience and shifting reality. She manages to sustain this throughout the short novek, but in a way the reader would not expect. Jo narrates, and is neither reliable nor unreliable, but rather, unstable. She accepts the precariousness of her situation, has the patience one might expect from a scientist, and watches as things happen around her.

The appartment accumulates insects, mushrooms grow on the ledge of the bath, every surface becomes covered in moss, apples they purchase rot overnight and turn up randomly around the building. Meanwhile Jo and her flatmate, Carral, grow into their habitat and get closer to each other as a colony of fungus might.

Hval is a musician and the themes she explores here are similar to in her songwriting, those of identity and belonging.

This is a fascinating debut novel, one that is difficult to fit onto the genre shelf in a library. Just a small part of it belongs to ‘horror’. Experimental as it is, there are places where one could find fault, but I would rather contemplate what such talent as Hval might come up with next.
This was actually published in Norway 10 years ago, receiving an English translation from Marjam Idriss in 2018. Since then she has written two other novels, one of which, [book:Girls Against God|49130720] has been translated into English.