Boy Parts

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So much for Penance’s narrator; but what of its reader, engrossed by his uncannily realistic account of human misery? Penance answers Boy Parts’s question – art or porn? – by suggesting that the distinction isn’t always so clear. Slyly, it wonders if readers of Granta-endorsed literary fiction are so different from mere voyeurs. And would they ever pay attention to a town such as Crow-on-Sea unless drawn by morbid curiosity? In 2023 her second book was listed by The Independent in a discussion of recent novels using fiction to examine the true crime genre. [8] Publications [ edit ] Cummins, Anthony (24 June 2023). "Eliza Clark: 'I'm more primary school teacher than enfant terrible' "– via The Guardian. Carelli has settled in Crow, we learn, to investigate the torture and murder of 16-year-old Joan Wilson at the hands of three girls – Dolly, Violet and Angelica – from her school. Not every reader will make it through the opening scene, which describes Joan’s horrific death after the other girls douse her in petrol and set her on fire. Initially the crime drew little media interest, most likely because it took place on the night of the 2016 Brexit referendum. But three years later the “true-crime industrial complex” is turning its attention to Crow, spying a new opportunity to exploit human suffering for entertainment that’s “tailored to our basest instincts”. By contrast, Carelli hopes to “do something worthy”, intending to honour Crow and its still-grieving community by writing about the town as much as the crime itself. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

How Boy Parts writer Eliza Clark became one of our most exciting young novelists". The Independent. 22 October 2023. She had a short story She's Always Hungry published with Granta in 2023. [14] Awards and grants [ edit ]Those experiences, visible in Boy Parts, made Clark crave a nine-to-five office job. Applying to local arts organisations led her to the writing development agency New Writing North, which encouraged her to try for its mentorship scheme; next came stints at Mslexia, the magazine for female writers, and the writing charity Arvon. Clark credits that CV with showing her how precarious and rejection-laden writing can be; it meant she entered the industry under no illusions. Yet her goal was always to write full-time and buy a flat – which made it a “no-brainer”, she says, to quit Influx for more money at her current publisher, Faber, despite her gratitude to them for giving Boy Parts a platform. Consent has become part of mainstream discourse, with universities leading consent workshops and Prime Minister Boris Johnson taking part in training on sexual harassment earlier this year. So perhaps it’s unsurprising that we are seeing more and more authors exploring the “grey” areas where one or more characters are left with a sinking feeling in the bottom of their stomach that something wasn’t OK about a sexual encounter; from a non-consensual blowjob in Holly Bourne’s How Do You Like Me Now? (2019) to Sally Rooney’s Normal People (2018), where Marianne is studying abroad in Sweden and has a BDSM relationship with Lukas, who forces Marianne to pose for him naked and tied-up, the camera lingering on the bruises on her wrists. When Marianne begs him to stop, Lukas ignores her. “You asked for this,” he says. But while these novels look at females harmed by men not respecting their consent, in Boy Parts it is Irina who ignores Eddie from Tesco’s evident discomfort as she violates his boundaries in the way that others have repeatedly violated her.

Stanford, Eleanor (21 September 2023). "A 'Really Online' Writer Looks Beyond the Internet"– via NYTimes.com. Aimée Kelly plays the role with a winning blend of caustic humor and narcissistic self-pity: She’s highly strung, manipulative and insecure. By modulating her voice and posture, Kelly also plays various other characters, including Flo — Irina’s best friend, whose almost canine devotion is rewarded with casual contempt — and a succession of hapless young men, portrayed a sympathetic, slouchy charm. Irina’s motivations are both aesthetic and political: She idolizes the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini — the director of the infamously graphic feature “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” — and wants to subvert the traditional power dynamics of objectification in the visual arts, by putting men on the receiving end of a violating gaze. Any lingering suspicions that Clark is a mere provocateur will be banished by Penance, which – though it won’t appeal to all tastes – is a work of show-stopping formal mastery and penetrating intelligence. There’s none of the lazy writing that occasionally blemished Boy Parts (where one character is “pretty as a picture and thin as a rake” and, a few lines later, “flat as a board”). Whereas most contemporary novels feel like variations on a few fashionable themes, Newcastle-born Clark seems oblivious to the latest metropolitan literary preoccupations. How many writers, for instance, would set their much-heralded new work in the unglamorous leave-voting northern town of “Crow-on-Sea”? It’s here that, a bogus foreword informs us, the action of the book we’re about to read – Penance by true-crime journalist Alec Carelli – takes place. The one-woman show format is apt, in a way, since the story revolves around an unreliable narrator. By standing in for all the other characters, Kelly as Irina has complete control over the narrative, and the absence of any other physical presence gives a literal expression to Irina’s self-absorption.Boy Parts is fiercely current, peppered with pop culture references. Clark, who is in her twenties, has perfectly pinned down the way conversations between progressive young people can end up being a scramble for the moral high ground. Irina is au fait with current gender politics and other social issues, using them to justify her work, but she can also be transgressive of them, telling Flo to shut up when she objects to her using cocaine on moral grounds or judging her friend’s weight gain.

Still, the one thing that has tripped Clark up is the thought that people might project Irina on to her. “I’m a nice person,” she says. “And I’m very concerned about whether I’m liked or not.”

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a b Ashby, Chloë (22 July 2020). "Eliza Clark: 'I'm from Newcastle and working class. To publishers, I'm diverse' "– via The Guardian. In a New York Times interview in 2023, she spoke about being "really online", [6] later telling The Independent that "the internet has been such a big part of my life but it’s taken years of work to disengage from it, and realise that it was actually a really negative influence". [7] When Eliza Clark’s debut novel came out with an indie publisher in 2020, nobody imagined that her second would be among the most eagerly awaited of 2023. Her rise from obscurity to literary celebrity began when fans on TikTok made Boy Parts a cult hit. It was complete when, a few months ago, Granta magazine named the 29-year-old author one of the UK’s best 20 novelists under the age of 40. How far can you go in the name of art? For Irina, nothing is off-limits. She’s a photographer who takes pictures of young men, with a particular preference for guys that are unprepossessing, shy and biddable. Irina’s “thing” is capturing male vulnerability, so she photographs her subjects in compromising poses; she takes liberties with consent, and violates their dignity in increasingly troubling and violent ways.