I loved Eliza Clark’s first novel, Boy Parts, which was dark, violent, and very subversively funny. I really looked forward to getting stuck into this second novel, though I slightly feared that it might be a ‘difficult’ second novel. There was a danger that Clark might just try to repeat the singular tone, style, and content of her first novel, and not quite pull it off.

I needn’t have worried: Clark is clearly a much better writer than that.

Penance is a parody of a true-crime book. It is ostensibly written by Alec Carelli, a thoroughly unlikeable journalist whose obsequiousness drops from every page. He is manipulative and judgemental, and Clark relentless skewers him.

The crime in the book is the violent murder of a 16-year-old girl, committed by three of her school friends on the night of the Brexit referendum. Clark inhabits no end of different styles for this book, perfectly parodying true crime podcasters, commenters on internet forums, and discourse on Tumblr. She even writes a pitch-perfect Guardian interview as a postscript.

Granta recently named Clark as one of the best novelists under 40. I think she’s one of the best novelists, full stop, and this book only goes to prove that.

Some quotations:

Vance Diamond, for the uninitiated, was a nightclub owner, radio and television presenter and a philanthropist. He was also a serial sex offender – possibly one of the worst in British history if one could quantify sex offences on a scorecard the way we might ‘score’ a serial killer.

The Cherry Creek massacre was a pretty obscure case—it still kind of is outside of true-crime circles, honestly. Another American school shooting—it feels like there’s one every five minutes so it’s like who cares, big deal, even the most obsessed people can barely keep up with them.

Violet liked battered things. Nothing was so delicate and precious as that which had already begun to fall to pieces. She wanted to preserve its last gasp of colour and beauty.

I would put up a big front online, but I spent a lot of time alone in my room, feeling really shitty about myself.

Yesterday, Granta published its once-a-decade ‘Best of Young British Writers’ list.

Of the twenty writers on the list, I’ve read books by only two of them: I read Attrib. and Other Stories by Eley Williams a couple of years ago, and Boy Parts by Eliza Clark earlier this year.

I am especially delighted to see the latter on this list. When I read it, I thought that Boy Parts was an exceptional novel, but I perhaps didn’t realise quite how good it was. Even now, months later, the characters pop into my head and I ponder some of the situations Irina found herself in.

Looking back at my own review, and reading those of others, I’m reminded by how dark parts of the book were. It isn’t the darkness that has stayed with me: quite the opposite. I recall the lightness, the absurdity, the humour, and the reflections on photographic art as a medium. I remember the characterisation of my home city. And most of all, I remember some of the characters, as though I knew them personally.

The way Clark’s characters have taken up rent-free residence in my brain reminds me of my response to Kazuo Ishiguro’s books. It’s great to see her get some recognition, especially since the reviews of Boy Parts weren’t universally praising. I’m looking forward with much anticipation to her next book, Penance, due out later in the year.

Boy Parts is Eliza Clark’s first novel. It was published in 2020. I thought I’d give it a go after it was mentioned in passing on the radio.

The novel, largely set in Newcastle, is narrated by a Royal College of Art graduate, Irina, who is also working in a bar to make enough money to survive. Early in the novel, she is offered the opportunity to exhibit at a fashionable London gallery, which leads her to look through an archive of her work to date, as well as throwing herself into production of new work. Her art involves taking explicit photographs of average-looking men she scouts in everyday life.

This is one of those novels that hits the reader full-square in the face from the first page, and doesn’t slow down. Some have described it as a horror and some as a thriller, but I think it defies straightforward categorisation. It explores questions about the connection between art and mental illness, about gender norms in contemporary Britain, about the nature of consent, and about the attitudes of cluelessly disconnected people based in London to those in “the North”. I note that Clark is a Newcastle-born novelist living in London, and the last of these elements is so hilariously / depressingly pitch-perfect that it must surely be drawing on her own experience. (Irina’s “Is your dad a miner?” query recalled my own ”I’ve never met a doctor from one of the Northern medical schools!” moment when working in London.)

There are some moments of quite graphic violence in this novel, which would often put me off, but here they are integral to the character-building, and so didn’t seem unnecessary or gratuitous. There is some mention of Newcastle-specific details, including a paragraph riffing on the possible routes that a character could take when driving between two locations, but this seemed to parody assumptions about geographical familiarity made in books set in the capital—which I found hilarious.

All things considered, I thought this novel was exceptional, and I look forward to Clark’s future work.

I’m grateful to Newcastle City Library for lending me a copy of this book.