Book Review: Eliza Clark blurs the lines between the reality and fantasy of adolescent angst

Eliza Clark, author. Pic: Richard Kenworthy

• Penance
• Eliza Clark
• Faber & Faber, €14.99 pb

A second novel can be tricky to write, and Penance follows Eliza Clark’s bestselling debut, Boy Parts. 

The news of the success of her first published work entered Clark’s consciousness slowly as, during and after the pandemic, Boy Parts was flat-lining on the market, but sales seem, belatedly, to have been fuelled by TikTok videos. 

Although 29-year-old Clark does not use that platform, her online life was, and is, flourishing. She gave up reading books years ago, diving instead into the dark depths of the internet, hunting true crime.

One example she saw was the Shander Sharer case from 1992, located in Indiana, which described how a small group of teenagers tortured and killed one of their classmates, an ordeal for the victim which culminated in being burned alive. 

The images stayed with Clark, festering in her brain, until they emerged, literally kicking and screaming, in Penance.

Clark sets the action in Crow-on-Sea, a fictional resort between Whitby and Scarborough on the Yorkshire and Humber coast.

The action follows a group of girls from primary through to secondary school. As is normal the friendships vacillate with Joni (the murderee) and her bestie, Violet, being determined to remain childlike while three others, Angelica, Kayleigh and Aleesha, can’t wait to become women. 

At high school the group is diluted by Jayde, Lauren and Dolly and the resulting maelstrom of fickle loyalties spirals in a self-destructive manner.

Clark considers adolescence to be a time of great misery as physical and psychological changes make everyday existence challenging. 

Nowadays, with the concept of irl (in real life) and its opposite, it is hard to locate the boundaries of fantasy, and thus difficult to realise what consequences might result from actual actions.

Penance, by Eliza Clark

The murderers are ordinary girls from families who are not poverty-stricken and homes that are comfortable. 

Clark wants to consider how the contexts around the individuals enabled such aberrant group behaviour. 

She wants to build a credible background for the exploits that she has created for her characters.

Joni’s mother, for instance, has emerged from a youth of peace and love: she named her child after the great folk/rock star of the sixties. 

Angelica’s father is a scion of a land/hotel-owning dynasty and is raising his favourite as if she were a princess. No punishment, either at home or school, ever follows digressive behaviour.

In Penance Clark narrates through the medium of a writer, Alex Z. Carelli, who, unlike herself, specialises in true crime reportage. 

The invented storyteller inveigles his way into the domestic spheres of all involved, giving details of the parents’ upbringings and careers. 

It is as if he were constructing a bonfire, painstakingly collecting flammable trash from all sources, prior to seeing why the moment of ignition took place and set off the final conflagration.

The voice of this unreliable narrator allows both the author and the reader to distance themselves from the content. 

It is necessary though, to decide whether there can be an excuse to delve into this sort of pain porn, each reader must make her own decision as to whether she wants to proceed. 

Women are the victims and the perpetrators in Penance, and women constitute most of the true-crime readership. 

It is an aesthetic as well as a moral choice, well aired by a thoughtful woman who discusses within her novel whether you should read it.