Prominent translator and scholar Motoyuki Shibata has published an article discussing Mutilation Song in the Japanese web-journal Kangaeru Hito (“Thinker”). The article examines the book alongside The Organs of Sense, by Adam Ehrlich Sachs, both novels having been recommended by American writer Brian Evenson.
Review in Belgian culture magazine Focus Vif
“A disturbing, delirious, suffocating assault—upon the family, the illusion of a protective hearth, the supposed solidarity of human beings—that one would, however, have to be wrongheaded not to admire the mastery and power.”
— François Perrin
Mutilation Song reviewed in L’Humanité
“Dinn’s powers are immense, and when he enumerates them in the ear of Thomas, his ‘apprentice demon’, the most blasé of readers cannot repress a shiver… Jason Hrivnak, who, with The Plight House, made a masterful entry into the literature of malaise, now gives us this new Song added to hell, this poetical call to damnation.”
— Alain Nicolas
National press coverage in France
“The embryonic narratives formed into black and venomous little tales, recalling those of Edgar Poe… Like all new works, it does not subscribe to a genre but creates one if its own, a form never before seen, a precedent, perhaps, in the history of literature and it therefore seems necessary to me that it exists, that it can be read, even imitated.”
— Alice Zéniter, “Traduire, dit-elle”
“The first ordeal in this House is the act of reading. It presents us with a deforming (or true) mirror that reflects what we are determined not to see. But this atmosphere, which comes from Sade, from Kafka, from the great gothic and surrealist novels, engages us from the very start.”
— Alain Nicolas, “Quel cauchemar êtes-vous?”
“There is something astonishing in La Maison des Épreuves.”
— Mathieu Lindon, “Jeux Pernicieux Inc.”
Lynn Crosbie review
“First Rule of The Plight House: everyone talk about The Plight House. Hrivnak writes like a crazy angel in this addictive, astonishing debut.”
— LYNN CROSBIE