Penance: From the author of BOY PARTS

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Eliza Clark’s Penance is a fictional recreation of one of true crime’s most enduring staples the dead-white-girl story. Presented as a new edition of investigative non-fiction by Alec Carelli, Penance centres on the torture and murder of Yorkshire teenager Joan or Joni Wilson by a group of her fellow schoolgirls in 2016 – we’re told Carelli’s original edition was pulled from the shelves in a manner reminiscent of the fate of real-world, crime writer Paul Harrison’s Mind Games. Carelli is an interesting creation, a washed-up, former journalist who’s not ashamed to admit Penance was a bid to cash in on the phenomenal rise of true crime fuelled by online podcasts like Serial. In Carelli Clark has deliberately constructed a narrator who’s deeply suspect, someone almost impossibly distanced from the crime and the environment he’s supposedly interrogating. He’s ruthless enough to exploit his daughter’s death by suicide to get an interview but he’s also an unthinking, posh bloke who clearly knows nothing about the issues of class, gender, and power that this crime evokes. Clark however, a former true crime enthusiast, clearly does know her stuff, convincingly representing the complexities of the genre and its mostly female followers: from fangirling to fanfic. Here and there dropping breadcrumbs that gradually accumulate to undermine Carelli’s version of so-called “facts.” None of it worked for me. I kept putting the book down and it got to the point where I had to write a post-it with everyone's names and who they were because I kept forgetting (or didn't care enough to try to remember).

EC: For me, the most considered and interesting sort of true crime reporting has been in longform books that spend a lot of time with the victim and the broader sociopolitical context of the murder, which is something that a book gives you space to do, rather than just an hour of documentary, where you’ve got to get people to go on to the next episode, or an hour-long podcast where you really need to get your mattress advert in. Eliza Clarke: Yeah, it was when I was in the latter half of writing. The process of writing this book was really long and quite broken up. I wrote the first bits of Penance in late 2019 and then I didn’t really touch it until after Boy Parts had come out, so late summer 2020. Originally it was going to be long first-person accounts from each of the characters with interruptions from this journalist narrator, but it really wasn’t working, and I ended up deleting loads. It’s an oft-repeated adage that ‘crime doesn’t pay’, but true crime certainly does. True crime is a booming industry as new Netflix dramas, documentaries, and podcasts constantly drop, with the top earners – such as the podcasts My Favourite Murder and True Crime Obsessed – making millions each year. But more and more people are questioning our appetite for these grisly tales, whether it’s OK to have a favourite serial killer, and the ethics of profiting from other people’s suffering and death. Eliza Clark’s writing embraces the socially unacceptable and wryly explores themes of gender, power, and violence.”— Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2023 Though I think the main issue here is this, the book simply doesn’t know what it’s actually about -which means us (the reader/s) in turn, also don’t know what it’s about.The characterisation is brilliant, specifically in terms of how Clark writes the teenage characters navigating the discomfort of adolescence and trying to forge a sense of self in a small, suffocating seaside town (relatable). She also perfectly, and horrifyingly, captures the cruelty of teenage female friendship groups and how awful teenagers can be to one another.

I wasn't even able to finish Eliza Clark's debut, Boy Parts, so color me surprised when my interest was piqued when her sophomore novel hit NetGalley. Here's an example of when I'm glad to have given an author another chance. This book isn't perfect by any means, I'll discuss that in a bit, but it's leaps and bounds better than her debut, in my opinion.Absolutely here for books and media that put a spotlight on the true crime fascination and just how weird it is/can become. Add in a mixed media format, different narratives, and past/present timelines - *chefs kiss*. So there were some hits and some misses but in the end I am glad to have taken this twisted journey to the truth....or is it true? You be the judge. 3.5 stars! Alongside the crime focus is a detailed depiction of a small run-down coastal town situated between Scarborough and Whitby. The beats here are woven in seamlessly: from the Dracula connection of Whitby to the witch trials, to the local UKIP MP and a Jimmy Saville-alike abuser-in-plain-sight local 'hero'. BP: There’s also all the weird serial killer stuff that was on Tumblr though, like I remember the Jeffrey Dahmer flower crowns and the weird fandom around the Columbine dudes. Remember when everyone thought the Boston Bomber was really hot? Like what an insane time.

penance' is a journalist's account of the gruesome murder of sixteen-year-old joni, which occured on the eve of the brexit vote, in a northern english seaside town, at the hands of three teenage girls. Eliza Clark: It all came together gradually. It took me quite a long time to write Penance compared to Boy Parts . But also, I did want to do something more formally ambitious. I wanted to prove that I could do something very different to Boy Parts , to myself and to readers. Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Hallucinogenic, electric and sharp, Boy Parts is a whirlwind exploration of gender, class and power.’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?

Eliza Clark: I suppose I was just generally interested in it. Originally, I wanted to write Penance as this fake true crime thing, because there was this case I was particularly interested in. Then as I started reading more high-quality true crime, as well as listening to more slightly dubious podcasts that were engaged with a lot of the muddier areas around true crime, my relationship with the genre shifted a lot. I wanted to do something more critical. Angelica, Dolly and Violet gag Joni as they drive towards a beach hut in the fictional Yorkshire town of Crow-on-Sea. There they torture her, cut off her hair, douse her in petrol and set her alight. They flee the scene to buy milkshakes at McDonald’s, while Joni regains consciousness and runs to a nearby B&B. Burned raw, she is put in an ambulance, where she soon dies of her injuries.

So with a few minor tweaks this could really be sensational and the pacing would improve tremendously. EC: My two main inspirations were the Shanda Sharer murder which happened in the 90s in the States, which is probably the most direct comparison [In 1992, 12-year-old Shanda Sharer was tortured and burned to death by a group of older teenage girls]. And there are some aspects that are drawn from the Suzanne Capper murder, which also happened in the 1990s, but her murder coincided with the Jamie Bulger murder trial, so nobody has heard of that case even though it’s very extreme and very awful. That’s where the idea of a crime getting buried by a story that is dominating the news cycle came from. BP: I want to hear about how you created the town of Crow-on-Sea because, genuinely, I feel I could draw an accurate map of the place. There is a level of detail in your description of this town through its history, its buildings and its inhabitants that is just not seen in contemporary fiction anymore. The pastiche structure reminds me of recent banger True Story by Kate Reed Petty, or Carrie by Stephen King but, Eliza being Eliza, Penance is truly one of a kind. A compulsive rollercoaster of murder, 2010s internet culture, urban decay in the northeast, and the cruelty of adolescence. I was completely swallowed by it, and felt a morbid sorrow to see it end. Eliza is just so astute, and the examination of true crime is second to none.