Penance

Eliza Clark is a genius with voice and a master of flipped expectations. Penance astonished me with its breadth, wit and confidence. A wickedly clever deep dive into the nastier corners of the national psyche - you've never read anything like this.

Boy Parts was always going to be a tough act to follow, and Penance rises to the challenge – and engulfs it in flames. An unmissable banger that you need to preorder immediately.

As bleak as it is compelling, Penance is a perfect dark satire of the voyeuristic true crime industry and the media's complicity in sensationalising the pointless destruction of human lives into a vulgar, grubby money-making circus.

Fans of Joseph Knox’s True Crime Story and Megan Abbott’s teen noirs will love Clark’s meta-meditation on the mysteries, malice, and minutiae of adolescence.

I loved Boy Parts but this was another creature entirely. Coolly detached, stricter, cleaner, and still insanely propulsive. Vivid, excellent dialogue, at times heartbreaking. She’s a master of structure that Clark.

I was left thoroughly gaslit by Penance, a dizzying exploration of the ethics of true crime. In a novel that manages to be both deeply disturbing and hilarious, Clark nails teenage pain and posturing, as well as the seductive moral vacuum of the online world.