“Clark shrewdly turns her own lens onto us, onto our obsession with true crime and our complicity in the industry it has spawned. . . . She is disturbingly gifted at inventing unrealities that feel uncannily believable.” — New York Times Book Review
"Her writing embraces the socially unacceptable, and wryly explores themes of gender, power and violence." — Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023
"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." — Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea
"A work of show-stopping formal mastery and penetrating intelligence." — The Guardian
"Never reads like a conventional novel. . . . Penance is written with such intelligence and dark humour . . . what Clark does best, though, is capture what it’s like being a teenager today." — The Telegraph
"Intricate . . . the skin-prickling result is a pitch-dark mosaic of murky families and deadly frenemies, chronicling the slow decline of an ill-omened holiday resort with supernatural chills and metafictional twists." — The Observer (UK)
“With the precision of Yellowjackets, Clark marks the vicious intensity pulsing beneath adolescent female friendships and presses it to its most savage conclusions—except these girls have social media accounts and British accents. This novel is certainly not for the faint of heart, but the violence at its core is cut slightly by the fascinating questions about the ethics of true crime at its periphery (not to mention Clark’s hilariously pitch-perfect impersonation of teenaged girls and Tumblr subcultures).” — Oprah Daily
"Chilling, clever and unputdownable." — The Guardian (UK)
"Deeply disturbing and hilarious." — Imogen Crimp, author of A Very Nice Girl
“Penance is a darkly compelling study of violence, madness and manipulation. It is grimly topical in light of the frequent mass killings in America and the steady scourge of knife crime among youngsters in Britain. Ms Clark, who this year was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, impresses with her effective conceit and her slippery narrator. The patchwork narrative is skillfully woven together . . . . she captivates with her sharp depictions of three young women who create their own 'tiny hell.'” — The Economist
"Penance is in one of literature’s most crucial categories, ‘undeniable banger.'" — Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation
“Eliza Clark’s propulsive novel dives into the depraved obsession with true crime, class, and power in a distressing look at young women and the darkness of the human spirit.” — Nylon Magazine
"Clark weaves a gripping tale that leads readers through podcast transcripts, text messages, interviews and Tumblr posts to show how stories become truth and explore the fraught space of teenage friendships and fandom as they collide with true crime." — Dazed
"Clark’s prose is brisk and clever, and the horror of the events described implicitly but deliberately raises a difficult question: to what extent are we as readers merely fresh initiates in a club of corpse-ogling fanatics?" — Literary Review
"Gripping . . . . A seaside Happy Valley." — Sheena Patel, author of I'm A Fan
"An ambitious deconstruction of society’s voyeuristic obsession with the true crime genre, written as a pseudo piece of investigative nonfiction, Penance is . . . a lot. But it’s a big, big swing." — Paste Magazine
"Think Ruth Rendell’s psychological intensity meets Murderpedia.org. Clark’s skilled foreshadowing, characterization, and atmospheric conjuring make her one to watch." — Booklist
"Clark's second book is another firecracker . . . . Compelling." — Crack Magazine
"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." — Charlotte Vassell, author of The Other Half
“I'd always assumed that true crime was primarily an American pastime, but Penance, the sophomore novel from Britain's Eliza Clark, demonstrates that our obsession has crossed the pond. . . Penance is packaged as a true crime potboiler, written by disgraced tabloid journalist Alec Carelli. . . . .which Clark does convincingly . . . .Her talent is still abundant here . . . particularly in Clark's trenchant observations . . .and in the novel's imaginative coda.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Penance is a bold experiment in both content and form, as well as a biting satire of the modern true crime industry." — The Harvard Crimson
"Eliza Clark’s thoughtful follow-up to her debut novel Boy Parts gives readers the opportunity to examine true crime from unexpected angles." — Chicago Review of Books
"Bright young novelist Eliza Clark writes dark . . . . Clever." — Washington Post
2023-07-13
Three girls in a failing seaside town brutally murder a classmate in this (fictional) true-crime exposé.
True crime has become such a ubiquitous genre over the last 10 years—through podcasts, television, and nonfiction books—that it’s now fodder for fiction. Clark, who was recently named to the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta, approaches the genre with both a critical eye and an instinct for the lurid. The novel is framed as a nonfiction account of the brutal murder of a teenage girl by three of her classmates, written by disgraced tabloid reporter Alec Z. Carelli, who has unethically tinkered with his material. Joan Wilson, the victim of the crime, was tortured, assumed dead, and then set on fire, although she survived long enough to seek out help. Carelli investigates Joan’s life as well as the lives and actions of each of the three perpetrators: posh, bratty Angelica Stirling-Stewart; Joan’s old friend Violet Hubbard; and disturbed Dolly Hart, who’s obsessed with a hunky school shooter. Interspersed with Carelli’s reporting are podcast transcripts, fan fiction and online forum excerpts, and historical background about the bleak northern English town where the murder took place. Clark isn’t afraid to write about gruesome violence or bullying, and she tries to critique our culture’s fixation on true crime. Unfortunately, the execution of this long, often tedious novel is not strong enough to support its ideas; instead, it reads like just another grisly story of a murdered girl. Great investigative nonfiction authors write novelistic prose, while Clark’s is clunky by comparison. The structure of her novel is similarly uninspiring, moving from one long interview to the next with little analysis. This book is not believable as a work of investigative nonfiction, which renders its conceit annoying rather than provocative.
An ambitious sophomore attempt bites off more than it can chew.
