Penance
The 'unmissable banger' ALICE SLATER from the author of BOY PARTS and SHE'S ALWAYS HUNGRY
By Eliza Clark
Harry Hartog's review
Penance is a bold feat by Clark – a book within a book featuring a faux true-crime case, murderous teenage girls, and toxic internet fandoms - I was captivated! Clark authentically writes about 2010s internet culture like she lived through it herself; this novel was written by the chronically online for the chronically online. As someone who was in the depths of Tumblr during its peak era, albeit not as messed up as these teenage girls, I felt nostalgic, seen, and retraumatised while reading this. Although Penance is quite different from Clark’s debut, Boy Parts (which I devoured), Clark has a knack for creating brilliant unreliable narrators. Clark’s writing style and tone are addictive, gut-punching the reader with wit and sharp social commentary. I was thoroughly immersed in the novel’s analysis of girlhood and critiques on true-crime obsession. I will read anything else that Eliza Clark writes! - Bowen [they/them], Harry Hartog Bondi
Description
'You've never read anything like this.' - JULIA ARMFIELD
Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes?
Did you see the pictures of the body?
Did you look for them?
It's been years since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time. That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec. Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the 'definitive account' of the murder - and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.
The only question is: how much of it is true?
- ISBN:
- 9780571371778
- Format:
- Paperback / softback
- Pages:
- 448
- Published:
- Publisher:
- Faber & Faber
- Imprint:
- Faber & Faber
- Weight:
- 561 g