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Boy Parts
Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle.
Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention…
Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.
Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention…
Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.
304 pages, ebook
First published July 23, 2020
About the author
Eliza Clark
4 books1,815 followersEliza Clark has relocated from her native Newcastle back to London, where she previously attended Chelsea College of Art. She works in social media marketing, recently having worked for women’s creative writing magazine Mslexia. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North’s ‘Young Writers’ Talent Fund’. Clark’s short horror fiction has been published with Tales to Terrify, with an upcoming novelette from Gehenna and Hinnom expected this year. She hosts podcast You Just Don’t Get It, Do You? with her partner, where they discuss film and television which squanders its potential. Boy Parts is her first novel. You can find her @FancyEliza on both Twitter and Instagram.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 9,916 reviews
July 28, 2020
okay i don't usually write particularly lengthy reviews but i have #thots about this one so.
firstly, i saw that it's been compared to american psycho a lot and i do get it - particularly in the second half when the narrative gets increasingly more violent and dissociative - but honestly i don't think that's the most pertinent comparison when ottessa moshfegh's my year of rest and relaxation is like, right there with its Same Hat tone/style/characterisation and equally horrible-but-oh-god-mood protagonist. all three books have similarly strong existentialist overtones (irina: "i explain to him that nothing matters, and nothing lasts. everyone forgets, and everything disappears. the things you do, the things you are; it's all nothing. would anyone miss you, if you went away? would anyone look for you? would anyone listen, or even care, if i hurt you? if i put my hands around your neck and crushed your windpipe and chopped you up, would anyone find you? and if it's a no to any of these, did you even exist in the first place?" ugh!!! i love it!) but moshfegh's year of rest and relaxation is honestly stronger on capitalism than american psycho and boy parts is far faaar stronger on The Gender Of It All and those are basically american psycho's only themes so it's pretty much been rendered redundant by better writers and we can stop comparing shit to it now please (no more patrick bateman! society has progressed past the need for patrick bateman!) anyway bret easton ellis is a hack and i'm really drifting away from the point i was trying to make here. but functionally, american psycho is a book that was marketed as being transgressive, and i don't think that it is, bc i think people conflate genuine acts of subversion/transgression with good ol' shock value and imo nothing's really being ~transgressed when a wealthy white man exploits and abuses his power over others in the way that patrick bateman does - and i'm talking about this bc imo this is why boy parts is so successful. irina is so frustrated at the patriarchal power men wield over her, because it's stupid that they can even do that when they're also so easy for her to manipulate, not nearly as sharp or witty or interesting as her, and often even physically weaker/smaller than she is: it's forcefully understated within the narrative by irina herself but we hear about her sexual abuse as a teenager at the hands of her teacher, there's an attempted rape within the story, her physical safety is placed at risk at numerous points within the narrative, "was it my idea to have him hurt me, or did he just let me think it was?" - and irina's constant downplaying of the mental and physical effects this has on her reads to me as a pointed and deliberate attempt to undercut male violence and power by just, like, ignoring it, scorning it, making fun of it, and at points even becoming the aggressor & exploiting or enacting extreme violence on others herself. like, they can't win if you're just totally over it already. and so irina performs this facsimile of male power both in her art and her personal life, but it continually fails: after all a photograph is just a photograph, and there's a persistent failure of the men she assaults to respond to it with any real gravitas, because women are rarely perceived as a legitimate threat to a man's physical or mental wellbeing, and this leads to irina's dissociation - is she really doing the things she thinks she's doing if no one's reacting to them accordingly? all of this has knock-on effects on her humanity and mental health that become harder and harder to ignore as the narrative progresses, and this is the nuance and compassion that is entirely missing from american psycho; irina sturges is in places just as awful as patrick bateman (and if anyone tries to do a hillary-clinton-nasty-woman-cersei-lannister critique of this to argue that she's a feminist character i'll kill myself) but her reasons are infinitely more compelling psychologically and i would argue that filtering that bateman-esque narrative through an actually marginalised lens creates a work that's just undeniably far more worthy of critical attention and analysis.
another author i'd compare clark to is sally rooney - they aren't particularly similar tonally (although the disaffected matter-of-fact prose feels familiar i'm ngl) but both clark and rooney absolutely nail the experience of being a young girl who goes out and parties with her friends and makes shitty life decisions but who is also socially conscious and aware in ways that the mainstream consciousness seems to largely align (often erroneously) with being, like, sensible and responsible and boring and preternaturally wise, and it's like, no, i can absolutely vividly remember having really #deep and #profound conversations about feminism while being regrettably off my tits on mdma and it's just, oddly refreshing in the post-tumblr age to see characters who exist in that overlap of being a total dumpster fire but also smart and educated and opinionated (bobbi over text in conversations with friends: "that's vapid frances you have to do more than say you're anti things" absolute #icon #legend #westan #etc). it's authentic and interesting and very current and i'm really on board with this new wave of writers my age who understand it presumably bc they too have lived it. also on a tangentially similar note i genuinely i knew i was going to love this book when i got to this part: "...she's posting about it on her fucking blog again [...] i hate that she tells people. i hate that she fucking blogs about it, like my sex life is just fucking tumblr discourse for her. you know, for someone who claims to be woke, she truly does not give a flying fuck about consent the second it comes to flapping her skinny lips about my personal business" - like, oh my god, irina and flo's relationship is such an on-point skewering of the immensely fraught ~kweer female friendships/romances we all had on tumblr back in the day where it was all various degrees of homoerotic and we massively politicised every interaction we ever had like it was a problematic fandom ship and god, god, i read this and i had to put the book down for a solid ten minutes because it made me want to DIE
on that note i don't know how to end this review so here's some more excerpts that fully did me in:
- "flo shrieks along to the entirety of lizzo's 'good as hell,' and i wince. her 'THIS IS A GAYS ONLY EVENT, GO HOME' playlist finishes, then loops, and takes us back in with 'cool for the summer,' which i just hate. the homoerotic over-current of the lyrics while we're both sat in the living room in our bras and curlers is just... it's a lot."
- "when you don't get any pussy and spend your teens falling down the free porn rabbit hole, you end up like one of those freaks with an ahegao profile picture on twitter and an internet history that's seventy-five percent bukkake, twenty-five percent tragic google searches."
- "she likes the men she thinks she's supposed to like. her boyfriend has a big beard and an undercut, because when they got together that was the in thing. the boyfriend she had when we first met was this nme-cut-out, landfill-indie looking cunt with a porkpie hat and a huge fringe. she liked harry styles a few years ago, and now she likes that white-bread, absolute fucking baguette of a lad from call me by your name."
- "the walls are lined with bookshelves that seem to exclusively contain manga, graphic novels and comic books. there are figurines on his windowsill, and he has that akira poster that everyone has, as well as a bruce lee poster, and a bunch of pictures of some idol girl group. there are stickers on the headboard of his bed. i imagine grabbing the headboard and feeling stickers under my palms." like if i was taking psychic damage over the course of this paragraph i would have like 1 hp left by the time i got to the last full stop
firstly, i saw that it's been compared to american psycho a lot and i do get it - particularly in the second half when the narrative gets increasingly more violent and dissociative - but honestly i don't think that's the most pertinent comparison when ottessa moshfegh's my year of rest and relaxation is like, right there with its Same Hat tone/style/characterisation and equally horrible-but-oh-god-mood protagonist. all three books have similarly strong existentialist overtones (irina: "i explain to him that nothing matters, and nothing lasts. everyone forgets, and everything disappears. the things you do, the things you are; it's all nothing. would anyone miss you, if you went away? would anyone look for you? would anyone listen, or even care, if i hurt you? if i put my hands around your neck and crushed your windpipe and chopped you up, would anyone find you? and if it's a no to any of these, did you even exist in the first place?" ugh!!! i love it!) but moshfegh's year of rest and relaxation is honestly stronger on capitalism than american psycho and boy parts is far faaar stronger on The Gender Of It All and those are basically american psycho's only themes so it's pretty much been rendered redundant by better writers and we can stop comparing shit to it now please (no more patrick bateman! society has progressed past the need for patrick bateman!) anyway bret easton ellis is a hack and i'm really drifting away from the point i was trying to make here. but functionally, american psycho is a book that was marketed as being transgressive, and i don't think that it is, bc i think people conflate genuine acts of subversion/transgression with good ol' shock value and imo nothing's really being ~transgressed when a wealthy white man exploits and abuses his power over others in the way that patrick bateman does - and i'm talking about this bc imo this is why boy parts is so successful. irina is so frustrated at the patriarchal power men wield over her, because it's stupid that they can even do that when they're also so easy for her to manipulate, not nearly as sharp or witty or interesting as her, and often even physically weaker/smaller than she is: it's forcefully understated within the narrative by irina herself but we hear about her sexual abuse as a teenager at the hands of her teacher, there's an attempted rape within the story, her physical safety is placed at risk at numerous points within the narrative, "was it my idea to have him hurt me, or did he just let me think it was?" - and irina's constant downplaying of the mental and physical effects this has on her reads to me as a pointed and deliberate attempt to undercut male violence and power by just, like, ignoring it, scorning it, making fun of it, and at points even becoming the aggressor & exploiting or enacting extreme violence on others herself. like, they can't win if you're just totally over it already. and so irina performs this facsimile of male power both in her art and her personal life, but it continually fails: after all a photograph is just a photograph, and there's a persistent failure of the men she assaults to respond to it with any real gravitas, because women are rarely perceived as a legitimate threat to a man's physical or mental wellbeing, and this leads to irina's dissociation - is she really doing the things she thinks she's doing if no one's reacting to them accordingly? all of this has knock-on effects on her humanity and mental health that become harder and harder to ignore as the narrative progresses, and this is the nuance and compassion that is entirely missing from american psycho; irina sturges is in places just as awful as patrick bateman (and if anyone tries to do a hillary-clinton-nasty-woman-cersei-lannister critique of this to argue that she's a feminist character i'll kill myself) but her reasons are infinitely more compelling psychologically and i would argue that filtering that bateman-esque narrative through an actually marginalised lens creates a work that's just undeniably far more worthy of critical attention and analysis.
another author i'd compare clark to is sally rooney - they aren't particularly similar tonally (although the disaffected matter-of-fact prose feels familiar i'm ngl) but both clark and rooney absolutely nail the experience of being a young girl who goes out and parties with her friends and makes shitty life decisions but who is also socially conscious and aware in ways that the mainstream consciousness seems to largely align (often erroneously) with being, like, sensible and responsible and boring and preternaturally wise, and it's like, no, i can absolutely vividly remember having really #deep and #profound conversations about feminism while being regrettably off my tits on mdma and it's just, oddly refreshing in the post-tumblr age to see characters who exist in that overlap of being a total dumpster fire but also smart and educated and opinionated (bobbi over text in conversations with friends: "that's vapid frances you have to do more than say you're anti things" absolute #icon #legend #westan #etc). it's authentic and interesting and very current and i'm really on board with this new wave of writers my age who understand it presumably bc they too have lived it. also on a tangentially similar note i genuinely i knew i was going to love this book when i got to this part: "...she's posting about it on her fucking blog again [...] i hate that she tells people. i hate that she fucking blogs about it, like my sex life is just fucking tumblr discourse for her. you know, for someone who claims to be woke, she truly does not give a flying fuck about consent the second it comes to flapping her skinny lips about my personal business" - like, oh my god, irina and flo's relationship is such an on-point skewering of the immensely fraught ~kweer female friendships/romances we all had on tumblr back in the day where it was all various degrees of homoerotic and we massively politicised every interaction we ever had like it was a problematic fandom ship and god, god, i read this and i had to put the book down for a solid ten minutes because it made me want to DIE
on that note i don't know how to end this review so here's some more excerpts that fully did me in:
- "flo shrieks along to the entirety of lizzo's 'good as hell,' and i wince. her 'THIS IS A GAYS ONLY EVENT, GO HOME' playlist finishes, then loops, and takes us back in with 'cool for the summer,' which i just hate. the homoerotic over-current of the lyrics while we're both sat in the living room in our bras and curlers is just... it's a lot."
- "when you don't get any pussy and spend your teens falling down the free porn rabbit hole, you end up like one of those freaks with an ahegao profile picture on twitter and an internet history that's seventy-five percent bukkake, twenty-five percent tragic google searches."
- "she likes the men she thinks she's supposed to like. her boyfriend has a big beard and an undercut, because when they got together that was the in thing. the boyfriend she had when we first met was this nme-cut-out, landfill-indie looking cunt with a porkpie hat and a huge fringe. she liked harry styles a few years ago, and now she likes that white-bread, absolute fucking baguette of a lad from call me by your name."
- "the walls are lined with bookshelves that seem to exclusively contain manga, graphic novels and comic books. there are figurines on his windowsill, and he has that akira poster that everyone has, as well as a bruce lee poster, and a bunch of pictures of some idol girl group. there are stickers on the headboard of his bed. i imagine grabbing the headboard and feeling stickers under my palms." like if i was taking psychic damage over the course of this paragraph i would have like 1 hp left by the time i got to the last full stop
August 26, 2021
american psycho but for hot girls
September 1, 2022
really effective horror novel if you, too, find female manipulator/chic diet/coquette core tumblr a spooky place to be
March 29, 2024
i'm a simple girl. i see my friend five star a book, i read that book.
and my response to this one can be summed up in 1 word:
ACK!!!
this is the final boss of unreliable narrators. if you've been reading a lot of lit fic about unlikable women lately (and it's all i know how to read), and you've been able to separate characters from your feelings about them (and that is one of my few skills), and you know the narrator is not the author (something i am aware of, usually), then you might. MIGHT! be prepared for this one.
maybe.
personally i wish i had training wheels. and less gore. but i'm willing to admit my badass image is mostly just a projection.
bottom line: i love this book's genre more than i love this book.
and my response to this one can be summed up in 1 word:
ACK!!!
this is the final boss of unreliable narrators. if you've been reading a lot of lit fic about unlikable women lately (and it's all i know how to read), and you've been able to separate characters from your feelings about them (and that is one of my few skills), and you know the narrator is not the author (something i am aware of, usually), then you might. MIGHT! be prepared for this one.
maybe.
personally i wish i had training wheels. and less gore. but i'm willing to admit my badass image is mostly just a projection.
bottom line: i love this book's genre more than i love this book.
August 4, 2020
I waited. I waited and waited -- to like this, for something to snap. She's a modern Patrick Bateman! Okay, that's fine, now what? There's a progression, in a way, but then it just ends. There's nothing. There's no point. She's just an incredibly toxic narcissist who isn't even interesting. I spent 200 pages in the head of someone I loathed and I don't feel, personally, like I got anything out of the experience.
July 19, 2024
‘Do I have to smash a glass over the head of every single man I come into contact with, just so I leave a fucking mark?’
Power dynamics have been a topic of necessary criticism in recent years, with a reckoning coming to those who exploit their power to abuse others. This has notably addressed the entertainment industry, with horror stories surfacing of monsters of anywhere from massive wealth like Harvey Weinstein to niche fame like Ryan Adams abusing and harassing women and many have paused to consider how we process the art of monstrous men (such was the title of Claire Dederer’s viral essay, which you can read here). Into the fray comes Eliza Clarks debut novel, Boy Parts, a first person narration chronicling the spiral into abuse and otherwise unhinged behavior of Irina, a strikingly attractive rising star in the realm of fetish photography. Opting to shoot so-called average looking men she finds on the streets to model for her in work that subverts the male gaze and examines ideas of power and sexuality, Irina has snagged a career changing gallery exhibition in London and sets about revisiting the trajectory of her art, triggering memories that show a history of abuse and struggles in an art world where only the strong survive. Meanwhile, her fixation with a shy Tesco cashier and a head full of drugs are amalgamating into a dangerous cocktail. Sharp, darkly humorous and caustically insightful, Boy Parts is a bold maelstrom of sexuality, violence and power hierarchies that is too engaging to turn away from in horror even as it seeps in and shakes you to the core.
‘I look at the photos again, the ones I didn't delete. I look at his purple face, his bloody chin and nipple, his swollen cheek. I wonder what the fuck I have to do for people to recognise me as a threat, you know?’
First, shoutout to Emma’s review that inspired me to pick this up immediately, I’m so glad I did. Clark manages to make a feverish descent to hell into a thrill ride where we clutch the page like the harness on a roller coaster and spend the whole trip both screaming and laughing. This shakes you around like a rag doll and you love it as you begin to see Boy Parts as your dominant partner and while you are going to get pleasure you are also going to get pain. She takes you down the tracks of her prose so effortlessly, balancing the action of parties, photoshoots and…well, completely unhinged moments that often involve shards of glass, with the softer, introspective times revisiting Irina’s history in the classroom and behind the camera. She captures dialogue and regional accents as if she bottled it up from the air and pinned it to the page where, still fresh and alive, it squirms in discomfort as much as the reader. The sections written as text messages are amusing as well, with drunk misspellings or autocorrect mistakes that felt true to life. There are some laugh out loud lines, such as describing Timothée Chalamet as ‘ that white-bread, absolute fucking baguette of a lad from Call Me by Your Name’ (I texted photos of that page to several friends), and I was obsessed with Irina’s obsession with Lord of the Rings:
Yea, of course I’m going to love a book that rattles off lines like this. Boy Parts is an impressive debut that, considering the subject matter, reads like she just punched out the scariest person in prison on the first day.
The book has drawn comparisons with Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation as well as American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (the latter most notably during a delightfully disturbing scene when sudden violence in a fancy restaurant for extremely wealthy conservatives has people more concerned if the staff will comp their meal for witnessing violence than actually concerned about the violence), though with a woman instead of Bateman. Not unlike Psycho we do see this as a criticism on wealth and consumerism as one of the themes—amusingly, Irina gets termed as a ‘working-class’ artist despite being able to afford fancy universities something she has an uneasy relationship with seeing it as both an insult but not upset it can help open doors for her—and, well, the violence and unreliable narration. Is Irina actually truthful to what she not only tells us, but tells herself as well? Is all of this happening? The book this felt closest to for me, however, is the ideas in Roberto Bolaño’s Distant Star and how art can have moral boundaries that, when crossed, becomes evil. Here we have Irina, a tall, intimidating redhead criticized by her professor, lesbian art icon and former lover, Frank, for having ‘had a contemptuous attitude towards my models. I clearly saw them as interchangeable, disposable objects.’ This is not unlike the depiction of the poet-turned-murderer in Distant Star, who uses actual photos of women he killed as an art exhibit that even distresses his fellow fascists, that he ‘looked down on the world as if he were standing on top of a volcano; he saw you and me and himself from a great height, and, in his eyes, we were all, to be quite frank, pathetic insects.’ If abuse is leading to the photographs Irina takes, is the art somehow tainted by this? And whew, does some alarming things happen to get the shots she wants.
‘Consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist that might disrupt the viewing of the art; the biography of the audience member that might shape the viewing of the art.’
--Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma
Key to this book are the gazes into power structures that shatters any rose colored glasses they might try to hide behind. ‘Whether I’m in control or losing it, I’ve always had a power thing,’ Irina admits, and this is central to her art. Clark brings us into the world of fetish art and kink sexualities and explores how those with power over others very often abuse it. The whole absolute power corrupts absolutely maxim may come to mind, though Clark is also careful to show how just because this story is about abuse doesn’t mean that all kink or dom/sub relationships are inherently abusive and harmful. As mentioned earlier, the recent years have been a litany of men in positions of power in the art world being exposed for using this power to assault and silence women, though we also know this has occurred throughout time with big names such as Picasso or Edward Hopper abusing their muses, and Andy Warhol has often been criticized for exploiting those around him. Clark is probing some interesting ideas of power and gender by reversing the gender roles with Irina being the intimidating role using her power to exploit her models. And hit them. ‘What about any of that read as safe, sane or consensual?’ she even admits to herself, yet sort of loves the power over these men. And not just men, but even Flo, her best (only?) friend and former lover that she keeps around to take care of her (okay, I sort of loved Flo, she really meant well and I felt bad for her).
Now the idea of reversing gender in this sort of power hierarchy isn’t new—I quite enjoyed Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi exploring this in Fra Keeler—but I quite liked how this touches on ideas of “woke culture” and how society will overlook abuse if they find a way to look at it as subversive. There is a moment when Flo tries to find a way to look at buying heterosexual, exploitive porn by men into a queer act of disruption where even the lesbian feminist professor can only roll her eyes in embarrassment. Its why books such as In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado have been talked about as important for reminding people that abuse can happen even in relationships that we are championing. Like yes, protect queer relationships and let us be considered legal and normal, but also yes abuse can happen in them and we shouldn’t allow people to suffer in silence.
‘and that gets sewn into them young, doesn’t it? Violence.’
Irina represents a lot of power abuse, such as how being photographed by her is framed as an honor to these men. Such as the unhoused boy who possibly meets a bad end who should “feel thankful” for a place to stay and a starring role in her art. Clark has a sharp eye for the ways people try to represent themselves and there are some great insights into behavior in this book, and how Irina is able to hone in on it and exploit it. Even Eddie from Tesco, her “muse” in this book (and a lot of this is why muse culture is so toxic and exploitative) admits he comes across like an INCEL and can’t believe someone who looks like Irina would be interested in him. Yet for all the power Irina exhibits over others, there is still the aspect of a patriarchal society she works within and how dangerous it is for women. Men lash out at her and she is often in danger (her works bring out a LOT of bad behavior from the men) and some of the violence is legitimate self-defense. There is also a lot of looking at how men with money can elbow their way into anything despite mediocrity, that there is ‘still this entitled, still this generic, still this wealth of privilege and connections filling a void where there should be talent,’ and when they don’t get what they want they lash out. Often violently.
‘If we were playing rock, paper, scissors, but it’s camera, toxic masculinity, skull — camera wins’
I couldn’t put this book down. And when I had to do so for life reasons, I thought about it the whole time. Boy Parts is a distressing novel, but one that probes really important questions about power, sexuality and violence, and does so in a way that will have you laughing as much as you are cringing. I especially appreciate the ending and that Clark understands the conclusion of themes is vastly more effective than a tidy ending with a full stop as it allows Irina and her shenanigans to play out further in your mind long after the book concludes. The trigger warnings on this would be a mile long and this isn't for the faint of heart, but it is a wickedly well done ride. The writing is sharp and so is the social commentary and I will definitely read anything Eliza Clark puts out next.
4.5/5
‘Nothing matters, and nothing lasts. Everyone forgets, and everything disappears. The things you do, the things you are, it's all nothing. Would anyone miss you, if you went away? Would anyone look for you? Would anyone listen, or even care, if I hurt you? If I put my hands around your neck and crushed your windpipe and chopped you up, would anyone find you? And if it's a no to any of these, did you even exist in the first place?’
Power dynamics have been a topic of necessary criticism in recent years, with a reckoning coming to those who exploit their power to abuse others. This has notably addressed the entertainment industry, with horror stories surfacing of monsters of anywhere from massive wealth like Harvey Weinstein to niche fame like Ryan Adams abusing and harassing women and many have paused to consider how we process the art of monstrous men (such was the title of Claire Dederer’s viral essay, which you can read here). Into the fray comes Eliza Clarks debut novel, Boy Parts, a first person narration chronicling the spiral into abuse and otherwise unhinged behavior of Irina, a strikingly attractive rising star in the realm of fetish photography. Opting to shoot so-called average looking men she finds on the streets to model for her in work that subverts the male gaze and examines ideas of power and sexuality, Irina has snagged a career changing gallery exhibition in London and sets about revisiting the trajectory of her art, triggering memories that show a history of abuse and struggles in an art world where only the strong survive. Meanwhile, her fixation with a shy Tesco cashier and a head full of drugs are amalgamating into a dangerous cocktail. Sharp, darkly humorous and caustically insightful, Boy Parts is a bold maelstrom of sexuality, violence and power hierarchies that is too engaging to turn away from in horror even as it seeps in and shakes you to the core.
‘I look at the photos again, the ones I didn't delete. I look at his purple face, his bloody chin and nipple, his swollen cheek. I wonder what the fuck I have to do for people to recognise me as a threat, you know?’
First, shoutout to Emma’s review that inspired me to pick this up immediately, I’m so glad I did. Clark manages to make a feverish descent to hell into a thrill ride where we clutch the page like the harness on a roller coaster and spend the whole trip both screaming and laughing. This shakes you around like a rag doll and you love it as you begin to see Boy Parts as your dominant partner and while you are going to get pleasure you are also going to get pain. She takes you down the tracks of her prose so effortlessly, balancing the action of parties, photoshoots and…well, completely unhinged moments that often involve shards of glass, with the softer, introspective times revisiting Irina’s history in the classroom and behind the camera. She captures dialogue and regional accents as if she bottled it up from the air and pinned it to the page where, still fresh and alive, it squirms in discomfort as much as the reader. The sections written as text messages are amusing as well, with drunk misspellings or autocorrect mistakes that felt true to life. There are some laugh out loud lines, such as describing Timothée Chalamet as ‘ that white-bread, absolute fucking baguette of a lad from Call Me by Your Name’ (I texted photos of that page to several friends), and I was obsessed with Irina’s obsession with Lord of the Rings:
‘He eats loudly, reminding me of that bit in The Return of the King (the film) where Denethor is eating cherry tomatoes, and making Pippin sing for him. In this metaphor—allegory?—I guess I’m Pippin, which is strange because I’ve never identified much with the Hobbits before, and I’m actually a little annoyed that this is the position I’m in. Shocked to hear it comes in pints, and wondering if my simple Hobbit songs are good enough for these grand halls and their talking toilets.’
Yea, of course I’m going to love a book that rattles off lines like this. Boy Parts is an impressive debut that, considering the subject matter, reads like she just punched out the scariest person in prison on the first day.
The book has drawn comparisons with Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation as well as American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (the latter most notably during a delightfully disturbing scene when sudden violence in a fancy restaurant for extremely wealthy conservatives has people more concerned if the staff will comp their meal for witnessing violence than actually concerned about the violence), though with a woman instead of Bateman. Not unlike Psycho we do see this as a criticism on wealth and consumerism as one of the themes—amusingly, Irina gets termed as a ‘working-class’ artist despite being able to afford fancy universities something she has an uneasy relationship with seeing it as both an insult but not upset it can help open doors for her—and, well, the violence and unreliable narration. Is Irina actually truthful to what she not only tells us, but tells herself as well? Is all of this happening? The book this felt closest to for me, however, is the ideas in Roberto Bolaño’s Distant Star and how art can have moral boundaries that, when crossed, becomes evil. Here we have Irina, a tall, intimidating redhead criticized by her professor, lesbian art icon and former lover, Frank, for having ‘had a contemptuous attitude towards my models. I clearly saw them as interchangeable, disposable objects.’ This is not unlike the depiction of the poet-turned-murderer in Distant Star, who uses actual photos of women he killed as an art exhibit that even distresses his fellow fascists, that he ‘looked down on the world as if he were standing on top of a volcano; he saw you and me and himself from a great height, and, in his eyes, we were all, to be quite frank, pathetic insects.’ If abuse is leading to the photographs Irina takes, is the art somehow tainted by this? And whew, does some alarming things happen to get the shots she wants.
‘Consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist that might disrupt the viewing of the art; the biography of the audience member that might shape the viewing of the art.’
--Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma
Key to this book are the gazes into power structures that shatters any rose colored glasses they might try to hide behind. ‘Whether I’m in control or losing it, I’ve always had a power thing,’ Irina admits, and this is central to her art. Clark brings us into the world of fetish art and kink sexualities and explores how those with power over others very often abuse it. The whole absolute power corrupts absolutely maxim may come to mind, though Clark is also careful to show how just because this story is about abuse doesn’t mean that all kink or dom/sub relationships are inherently abusive and harmful. As mentioned earlier, the recent years have been a litany of men in positions of power in the art world being exposed for using this power to assault and silence women, though we also know this has occurred throughout time with big names such as Picasso or Edward Hopper abusing their muses, and Andy Warhol has often been criticized for exploiting those around him. Clark is probing some interesting ideas of power and gender by reversing the gender roles with Irina being the intimidating role using her power to exploit her models. And hit them. ‘What about any of that read as safe, sane or consensual?’ she even admits to herself, yet sort of loves the power over these men. And not just men, but even Flo, her best (only?) friend and former lover that she keeps around to take care of her (okay, I sort of loved Flo, she really meant well and I felt bad for her).
Now the idea of reversing gender in this sort of power hierarchy isn’t new—I quite enjoyed Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi exploring this in Fra Keeler—but I quite liked how this touches on ideas of “woke culture” and how society will overlook abuse if they find a way to look at it as subversive. There is a moment when Flo tries to find a way to look at buying heterosexual, exploitive porn by men into a queer act of disruption where even the lesbian feminist professor can only roll her eyes in embarrassment. Its why books such as In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado have been talked about as important for reminding people that abuse can happen even in relationships that we are championing. Like yes, protect queer relationships and let us be considered legal and normal, but also yes abuse can happen in them and we shouldn’t allow people to suffer in silence.
‘and that gets sewn into them young, doesn’t it? Violence.’
Irina represents a lot of power abuse, such as how being photographed by her is framed as an honor to these men. Such as the unhoused boy who possibly meets a bad end who should “feel thankful” for a place to stay and a starring role in her art. Clark has a sharp eye for the ways people try to represent themselves and there are some great insights into behavior in this book, and how Irina is able to hone in on it and exploit it. Even Eddie from Tesco, her “muse” in this book (and a lot of this is why muse culture is so toxic and exploitative) admits he comes across like an INCEL and can’t believe someone who looks like Irina would be interested in him. Yet for all the power Irina exhibits over others, there is still the aspect of a patriarchal society she works within and how dangerous it is for women. Men lash out at her and she is often in danger (her works bring out a LOT of bad behavior from the men) and some of the violence is legitimate self-defense. There is also a lot of looking at how men with money can elbow their way into anything despite mediocrity, that there is ‘still this entitled, still this generic, still this wealth of privilege and connections filling a void where there should be talent,’ and when they don’t get what they want they lash out. Often violently.
‘If we were playing rock, paper, scissors, but it’s camera, toxic masculinity, skull — camera wins’
I couldn’t put this book down. And when I had to do so for life reasons, I thought about it the whole time. Boy Parts is a distressing novel, but one that probes really important questions about power, sexuality and violence, and does so in a way that will have you laughing as much as you are cringing. I especially appreciate the ending and that Clark understands the conclusion of themes is vastly more effective than a tidy ending with a full stop as it allows Irina and her shenanigans to play out further in your mind long after the book concludes. The trigger warnings on this would be a mile long and this isn't for the faint of heart, but it is a wickedly well done ride. The writing is sharp and so is the social commentary and I will definitely read anything Eliza Clark puts out next.
4.5/5
‘Nothing matters, and nothing lasts. Everyone forgets, and everything disappears. The things you do, the things you are, it's all nothing. Would anyone miss you, if you went away? Would anyone look for you? Would anyone listen, or even care, if I hurt you? If I put my hands around your neck and crushed your windpipe and chopped you up, would anyone find you? And if it's a no to any of these, did you even exist in the first place?’
July 12, 2023
"I look at the photos again, the ones I didn't delete. I look at his purple face, his bloody chin and nipple, his swollen cheek. I wonder what the fuck I have to do for people to recognise me as a threat, you know?"
Boy Parts follows Irina, a fetish photographer who scouts unconventionally attractive men on the streets of Newcastle to photograph them in her studio/garage. Her work is explicit and plays dangerously with the idea of consent. The book follows the build up towards a big exhibition of Irina's work, and we watch as she trawls through her past work, reliving her interactions with her models, and her attempts at creating new work for the exhibition, which involves 'Eddie from Tesco'.
Everything we see is from Irina's perspective, which was such a thrill. Irina is a total narcissist, she lies, manipulates, and endangers herself and others. She's unpredictable and we don't know how much of her memory we can trust, which leaves hazy gaps and uncertainties throughout the story, which I loved.
This book is dark. Really dark. It's very violent. But it's also funny and intentionally cringy and has a razor-sharp social commentary. Eliza Clark explores gender issues and power dynamics, sexuality, consent, gentrification and quite a lot more.
American Psycho vibes. I loved it!
Boy Parts follows Irina, a fetish photographer who scouts unconventionally attractive men on the streets of Newcastle to photograph them in her studio/garage. Her work is explicit and plays dangerously with the idea of consent. The book follows the build up towards a big exhibition of Irina's work, and we watch as she trawls through her past work, reliving her interactions with her models, and her attempts at creating new work for the exhibition, which involves 'Eddie from Tesco'.
Everything we see is from Irina's perspective, which was such a thrill. Irina is a total narcissist, she lies, manipulates, and endangers herself and others. She's unpredictable and we don't know how much of her memory we can trust, which leaves hazy gaps and uncertainties throughout the story, which I loved.
This book is dark. Really dark. It's very violent. But it's also funny and intentionally cringy and has a razor-sharp social commentary. Eliza Clark explores gender issues and power dynamics, sexuality, consent, gentrification and quite a lot more.
American Psycho vibes. I loved it!
August 29, 2022
For those that find irina relatable do yourself and society a favor and seek therapy immediately
July 3, 2024
The audiobook narrator captured the subtleties of Irina’s character and made the audiobook feel urgent and emotional. Their voice captured Irina’s bravado and vulnerability and made her journey of artistic pursuit and self-discovery both captivating and challenging. Listen now: "Boy Parts" audiobook
Boy Parts introduces us to Irina, a provocative and mysterious photographer who blurs the lines between art and exploitation. It explores themes of desire, identity, and the contemporary queer experience through Irina’s lens. Clark’s writing is sharp and incisive as Irina explores the boundaries of art as well as the dark undercurrents of her personal life.
The exploration of sexuality and power dynamics is unapologetic and what does drive this book. It pushes past conventions and comfort zones and creates a platform that asks you to examine and be suspicious of beauty, exploitation and authenticity of art and life.
If you are in search of a challenging read that explores sexuality and its power dynamics, and challenges your assumptions about art and beauty, Boy Parts is a must listen. Eliza Clark has crafted a bold narrative that forces you to think about what it means to make queer art today.
Boy Parts introduces us to Irina, a provocative and mysterious photographer who blurs the lines between art and exploitation. It explores themes of desire, identity, and the contemporary queer experience through Irina’s lens. Clark’s writing is sharp and incisive as Irina explores the boundaries of art as well as the dark undercurrents of her personal life.
The exploration of sexuality and power dynamics is unapologetic and what does drive this book. It pushes past conventions and comfort zones and creates a platform that asks you to examine and be suspicious of beauty, exploitation and authenticity of art and life.
If you are in search of a challenging read that explores sexuality and its power dynamics, and challenges your assumptions about art and beauty, Boy Parts is a must listen. Eliza Clark has crafted a bold narrative that forces you to think about what it means to make queer art today.
July 23, 2020
Animals
meets
Tampa
meets
In the Miso Soup
meets Sweetpea. In Newcastle.
Do I have to smash a glass over the head of every single man I come into contact with, just so I leave a fucking mark?
Boy Parts follows the exploits of Irina Sturges, an acerbic Geordie fetish photographer who specialises in shooting 'interesting'-looking men. (As she often reminds us, 'I'm a broad church'.) A six-foot redhead with a killer hourglass body, Irina knows the power of her sexual appeal and wields it mercilessly against everyone – from her best friend (and erstwhile lover) Flo to sweet, shy Eddie, a Tesco checkout boy she persuades to model for her. The promise of a exhibition at a London gallery compels Irina to revisit her archive. Along the way, memories resurface... and some of them are things Irina has buried very deep indeed.
I first read about Boy Parts in December last year. I loved the blurb instantly, and stuck it straight on my books to look forward to in 2020 list. I preordered it as soon as preordering was possible. In other words, this was a book I was really keen to read. That weight of expectation can sometimes crush enjoyment. I wondered, as I started it, whether that would happen here; I was fascinated by Irina immediately, but did I love the story? Then I found my footing and I couldn't tear myself away from it and ended up sacking off work for hours so I could read the second half in one delirious stretch.
Irina is the perfect balance of antiheroine and villain, a protagonist who reflects the reader in glittering little shards as often as she repulses. There's a party scene (sequence?) so intimately, specifically horrible that it made me feel ecstatically glad to be too old and antisocial to go on weekend-long benders anymore. The ending is stupendous, hallucinatory, splintered in exactly the right way.
I could keep on comparing it to any number of other transgressive-subject-matter novels (American Psycho! Dirty Weekend! Lolito! The Killjoy!) but I think that's maybe just because if you tend towards them, you tend to keep a place in your heart for all of them. And to define it by comparison suggests Boy Parts isn't original, that it isn't great in its own right, which it ABSOLUTELY is.
As dark as spilled blood, as intoxicating as a triple vodka and as memorable as a well-aimed punch.
TinyLetter
Do I have to smash a glass over the head of every single man I come into contact with, just so I leave a fucking mark?
Boy Parts follows the exploits of Irina Sturges, an acerbic Geordie fetish photographer who specialises in shooting 'interesting'-looking men. (As she often reminds us, 'I'm a broad church'.) A six-foot redhead with a killer hourglass body, Irina knows the power of her sexual appeal and wields it mercilessly against everyone – from her best friend (and erstwhile lover) Flo to sweet, shy Eddie, a Tesco checkout boy she persuades to model for her. The promise of a exhibition at a London gallery compels Irina to revisit her archive. Along the way, memories resurface... and some of them are things Irina has buried very deep indeed.
I first read about Boy Parts in December last year. I loved the blurb instantly, and stuck it straight on my books to look forward to in 2020 list. I preordered it as soon as preordering was possible. In other words, this was a book I was really keen to read. That weight of expectation can sometimes crush enjoyment. I wondered, as I started it, whether that would happen here; I was fascinated by Irina immediately, but did I love the story? Then I found my footing and I couldn't tear myself away from it and ended up sacking off work for hours so I could read the second half in one delirious stretch.
Irina is the perfect balance of antiheroine and villain, a protagonist who reflects the reader in glittering little shards as often as she repulses. There's a party scene (sequence?) so intimately, specifically horrible that it made me feel ecstatically glad to be too old and antisocial to go on weekend-long benders anymore. The ending is stupendous, hallucinatory, splintered in exactly the right way.
I could keep on comparing it to any number of other transgressive-subject-matter novels (American Psycho! Dirty Weekend! Lolito! The Killjoy!) but I think that's maybe just because if you tend towards them, you tend to keep a place in your heart for all of them. And to define it by comparison suggests Boy Parts isn't original, that it isn't great in its own right, which it ABSOLUTELY is.
As dark as spilled blood, as intoxicating as a triple vodka and as memorable as a well-aimed punch.
TinyLetter
November 30, 2023
“was it my idea to have him hurt me, or did he just let me think it was?”
it’s women’s history month, so i’m starting the month with boy parts.
boy parts follows irina, a photographer who takes fetishistic and explicit photos of men she scouts as her models. she is narcissistic and manipulative and is hyperaware of the power she holds over men and people in general. she knows how to control a situation so she has the upper hand in every situation. the book begins when she gets an offer to exhibit her work at an art gallery. from here, we see glimpses of her past in fleeting hallucinatory and hazy flashbacks where there is no definitive line between imagination and reality.
the book is told in first person, which does fantastically in distorting the story even further, as she is as unreliable as a narrator can go. it’s very unhinged, very american psycho-esque, and i loved every page of it. irina is baiscally patrick bateman. she is equally cruel and violent to herself as she is cruel and violent to others, destructive as much as she is self destructive. while she has no regard for any sort of moral consequence, she has elusive moments of reflection where you almost feel sympathetic towards her. almost.
one of the reasons why i loved this book so much was that it was brilliantly written. the writing is not flowery or complicated in any way, but the way clark manages to weave in implied social commentary on gender roles and the male gaze is insane. with more accounts of male photographers abusing their power over female models (emily ratajowski, for example), this power dynamic is flipped on its head when irina pays no heed to her models who are essentially her victims. by subverting this structure, clark shines a light on both toxic masculinity and trauma alike.
it is hinted that irina has become this way because she suffered sexual abuse in her childhood and teenage years. this is a portrayal of how many people, men especially, who were previously abused in the past, become abusers. this is just one of the ways gender roles are twisted and distorted to allow us to see power disparities in real life for what they really are and provides a space for reflection.
what i was surprised to love were the plethora of pop culture references. i usually don’t like when books are so boldly twenty-first century, but the way they were laced in felt natural and didn’t ruin the flow of the narrative.
boy parts is thrilling and gross and visceral, and i enjoyed every single moment of it.
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
reread 2023
eliza clark i love you this is still so so good
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
pre-read
this feels like everything i love in a book so i'm going in with high hopes.
i've also only heard good things about it so it better not let me down or i may never recover again.
January 9, 2023
Hmm
I feel I wasted my time, I'm not sure I got what Eliza Clark was going for with this novel.
Irina, the narrator of this novel is a photographer, twenty-nine. She lives in Newcastle, UK. She specialises in photographing non-stereotypically attractive men in compromising and unusual poses, I guess you could call it fetish photography. She's amazonian, dresses to get attention and has a drug and alcohol problem, although it seems it's something everyone does - binge drinking and drugs. She's a terrible friend, daughter, and employee. She's got no redeeming qualities, she's clearly a sociopath or someone with an antisocial personality disorder.
I didn't get much out of this novel, there wasn't enough commentary on society, sex power dynamics, and relationships to make it worthwhile my time.
I never felt engaged, outraged or repulsed. It all felt very voyeuristic sans the excitement.
I feel I wasted my time, I'm not sure I got what Eliza Clark was going for with this novel.
Irina, the narrator of this novel is a photographer, twenty-nine. She lives in Newcastle, UK. She specialises in photographing non-stereotypically attractive men in compromising and unusual poses, I guess you could call it fetish photography. She's amazonian, dresses to get attention and has a drug and alcohol problem, although it seems it's something everyone does - binge drinking and drugs. She's a terrible friend, daughter, and employee. She's got no redeeming qualities, she's clearly a sociopath or someone with an antisocial personality disorder.
I didn't get much out of this novel, there wasn't enough commentary on society, sex power dynamics, and relationships to make it worthwhile my time.
I never felt engaged, outraged or repulsed. It all felt very voyeuristic sans the excitement.
September 7, 2020
*Note: I use Goodreads to track my own personal enjoyment of books I read - not for critical opinions. This book is very clever and deserves the high ratings other people are giving it. I just - as a ridiculously squeamish little loser who cannot handle blood, gore, or people being sick - obviously hated every second of it.
May 24, 2022
disclaimer: i did not like this book. the opinions and impressions i will express in this review are entirely subjective and i am not in fact stating ‘irrefutable facts’. it has come to my attention that this author has a history of going on twitter to ‘bemoan’ reviewers who have given her book a negative review...which has never been a win in my books. so i will attempt to write this review with a death of the author approach. please do not confuse my negative review of this book as a personal attack on the author or as an estimation of the author herself as i do not know her in any capacity whatsoever. if you are incensed by reviewers expressing an opinion that differs from your own one, you are better off skipping this review (this includes you too eliza…).
vague and not so vague spoilers below
I am befuddled by the ratings and reviews singing this book’s praises. This is one of those cases where I am forced to ask myself: did I read the same book as everybody else? And before you @ me, no, I did not dislike this book because it is work of satire centred on an (exaggeratedly) intentionally unlikeable main character. Some of my favorite books focus on people who are varying degrees of horrible or 'messy' (my year of rest and relaxation, luster, madame bovary, sula, pretend i’m dead, you exist too much, apartment, symptomatic, these violent delights, and a lot of the stuff written by authors such as shirley jackson, danzy senna, and joyce carol oates). I also like characters like Hannibal or Villanelle. I read Lolita and while it did repulse me (as intended) I didn’t hate it because it was from the pov of a p*dophile. And I am fond of the 'she’s not feeling too good' subgenre, contemporary books that are characterized by a caustic tone and explore the lives of women who are, you guessed it, not feeling too good and are depicted as alienated and self-sabotaging … I also do not have a problem with books combining dark humor with violence, My Sister the Serial Killer is a fave of mine. And a few months ago I was enthralled and disturbed by Titane directed by Julia Ducournau (who actually gets a mention in boy parts). All of this to say is that I can deal with and even appreciate characters who for whatever reason do, think, or say things that are ‘frowned’ upon or downright evil. I would go as far as to say that I prefer flawed characters over flawless/uber-likeable characters (very edgy of me, i know). My only caveat is that I have to find said unlikable characters interesting: Emma Bovary, for instance, is not a particularly clever character, you could say she is quite the opposite. She’s naive, pathetic, obnoxious, solipsistic, cruel, and superficial…but I found her acts of self-dramatization to be both fascinating and a source of great amusement. Ottessa Moshfregh’s narrator in MYORAR is nasty (she is awful to her supposed best friend, callous, narcissistic, morbid, and says/thinks offensive things about many groups of people). Did I condone her actions in the novel? No. Did I find her f*cked up sense of humor to be highly addictive? Yes. This is all to say that Irina being a stronza who engages in ‘bad’ behaviour, is not why I didn’t like this book. The reason why I did not like this book has less to do with her being an unlikable c*nt and more to do with her being boring as f*ck. Her internal monologue is repetitive, but not even in a realistic navel-gazey way, like Selin’s narration is in The Idiot, but in an incredibly affected way that just comes across as the book desperately trying to present this character as some counter-culture edgelady, who repeatedly ‘transgresses’ accepted norms of behaviours and—shock horror—flips the ‘male gaze’ on its head by being the one behind the camera. Maybe if this book had come out in the 80s, I would be more inclined to forgive or accept its many shortcomings, but since it was published in 2020 I have a harder time reconciling myself with its unimaginative and superficial exploration of female sexuality, the male gaze, and female rage. There is nothing clever about the way the narrative represents and discusses these themes. The narrative is very much all flash, no substance (tutto fumo e niente arrosto) as it not only mistakes shock value for real horror but it operates under the false assumption that gratuitous or otherwise sensationalistic content is subversive and thought-provoking. If this book had actually been disturbing maybe then I could have overlooked its pulpy and overt storyline…but it isn’t. Funnily enough the story’s numerous floundering attempts at edginess, but these feel dated and painfully affected, on the lines of Awad's Bunny or Mariana Enríquez who at least do not settle for mid-tier levels of offensive but f*cking commit.
Boy Parts reads like a short story that has been stretched beyond its expiry date. The ‘hook’, that of a ‘pervy’ female photographer, had potential for the first 30% of the narrative. Then things just get messy, and not a good kind of messy where I am enthralled by our mc’s unreliable and increasingly disconcerting narrative, but messy in a poorly executed kind of way. The writing changes slightly, but not in a believably organic way that reflects the main character’s spiralling mental health. The book’s satire is devoid of substance or bite. The caricatures populating this narrative are neither amusing nor particularly provocative. Some characters come across as heavy-handed attempts at capturing a certain type of person, while either serve no function other than to exist so the narrator can prove to the readers how nasty she is. The story could have been a lot more effective if the tone had been camped up, so we could have something along the lines of Jennifer’s Body (which is by no means a perfect film but at least it's entertaining and self-aware). Or maybe if the book had gone for a more elliptical stream-of-consciousness type of storytelling, a la Clarice Lispector, maybe then I would have liked it more. But what we got just did not work for me at all. There was something profoundly simplistic about the way these themes are explored and the narrator is one of the dullest galls I have ever had the misfortune to read about. Being a tall and sexy white Northern who thinks she’s the f*cking hardcore because she likes to take kinky photos of men she deems ‘beta’...yeah. The way the book satirizes England's art scene is banal, we get unfunny lines about identity politics and artists such as Tracey Emin. The narrative doesn’t convey Irina’s creative process in a convincing way, in fact, I was left with the impression that—and here i must briefly break from my death of the author approach and acknowledge the existence of the author—whoever was behind the story was either not particularly familiar with photography or not interested in going into detail about it (as i said this an impression i formed, not a fact). As examinations of female creativity go, this one is derivative and unsatisfying. I mean, compared to We Play Ourselves, Self-Portrait with Boy, and Generation Loss (all of whom happen to focus on queer young women who are not portrayed as exclusively interested in men and in replicating tired dom/sub dynamics) Boy Parts just doesn’t go much into depth when it comes to Irina and her changing relationship to her photography. I didn’t feel that she actually felt passionate about these photos, rather, we are told what she did at a school, and she relates the art she produced in that period in a very meh way, and now she gets horny when she tells men to pose in vanilla sub positions, while she occasionally plays the dom role (stepping on them and sh*t). Like, wow. How edgy. And you might say that the narrative is less concerned about mapping out the creative process preceding these photos than with over-emphasising what the photos themselves signify. Male gaze who? Uhm. Sure. Thing is, this kind of obvious ‘appropriation’ of the male gaze and the misogyny often underlining said gaze is not new nor thought-provoking. Quite the opposite in fact. I found the logic at play in the narrative to be highly sus: Irina experiences misogyny and is objectified by the male gaze; Irina perpetuates misogyny + misandry and objectifies men, her models in particular. Irina has a sexual encounter where the partner doesn’t listen to her when she says she wants to be on top. He ignores and demands her to scream for him, yanking her hair. She says that since he is going to ignore her he ‘could put his back into it’. He takes this as a confirmation that she ‘likes it rough’. Quelle surprise, she later has sex with someone she deems weak who asks her to slap him she starts hitting him until he starts crying and this leads to the classic ‘victim becomes abuser’ kind of observation that doesn’t really go deeper than that. If anything it is annoying that we get that scene just so the mc can have this dark eureka moment. Early in the story, Irina goes to a party where she is meeting up with a guy who is there to make fun of the ‘I’m a Nice Guy Really’ type of men who claim they are feminists while trying to wrangle themselves out of being accused of SA. Anyway, she goes to this party with her spineless friend who reminds her that even if she acts all hardcore she is a vulnerable woman. Our mc makes a joke about being raped by the guys she’s hanging out with and what later follows is an intentionally unclear scene where it seems that this guy the mc went to see tried to r*pe her while she was passed out or was otherwise incapacitated and therefore not being able to give consent. I really hated how timed this whole thing was. It was rather tasteless. I have come across other books that punish female characters who are confident in their sexuality or sexually active by resulting in scenes where they are SA or need a man to ‘save’ them. And here…this whole r*pe subplot seems just there for shock value and nothing else. The narrative seems to forget about it, more intent on emphasizing how edgy and obscene the mc is. F*cking hell. Can we not?! I am not saying that I want every story to include r*pe or SA to be serious and to exclusively revolve around this. However, the way the narrative meanders about without any real direction or without the kind of piercing commentary that makes up for vacuous storylines…I am left wondering why, why, why did we get this scene? Especially when the narrative seems confused about the kind of character Irina is. It seemed we were meant to perceive her as a vile character. Not quite a Humbert Humbert type of figure but someone who is working their way towards being the female equivalent of Patrick Bateman. She’s apathetic, has an inflated sense of self, experiences moments of dissociation where she observes the people around her with a mixture of superiority and detachment seems to categorize men in a way that is all the rage in the manosphere, and makes no compunction about transgressing accept norms of behaviour, engaging in sadistic behaviour, or deriving pleasure from what her society deems taboo (r*pe fantasies etc.). She can also perform certain roles, such as that of the Manic Pixie Girl, to her advantage, for example when she wants to attract the kind of men who would be into that type of girl. Irina, so far, seems a satirical take on the femme fatale. Yet, we also get so many instances that go against what this kind of characterization is trying to establish. For instance, she forgets that she has to perform a certain role and says whatever the f*ck comes to her because she’s such a girlboss. Sometimes she would make observations or remarks that would be believable if they originated from someone ‘normal’ or who was not shown to have psychopathic traits. For example, after that guy forces himself on her…she wonders about whether she really wanted rough sex and why do women feel that they have to say yes to rough sex etc…which is a valid af point but I did not believe that someone like Irina would even bother to have such thoughts. She should have been annoyed that someone of no consequence had physically overpowered her. Previously her response to being SA at the party was to be annoyed that that non-entity guy had the gall to try to r*pe her. But then we are meant to believe that she was in fact traumatized by this so much so that now she herself is subjecting others to the type of trauma she was victim to. Like…what is going on. And don’t get me started on how large chunks of the narrative make her abuse of men seem so f*cking transgressive and hardcore when it was anything but. There is a storyline involving, you guessed it, ‘boy parts’ that was just a rip off from American Psycho (in that we are meant to question the veracity of irina’s recollection of these violent events). Anyhow, the man who Irina abuses most happens to be a lot younger than her and, unlike her, despite the story's initial attempts at painting her as a struggling artist, her name is known in artsy circles and she can afford her living expense and the type of materials required to print out her edgy photos, he works at Tesco. Additionally, he is mixed-race, possibly queer, and was involved with someone abusive (emotional abuse is still abuse fellas). So, did I find Irina's SA him, gaslighting him, humiliating him, mistreating him, etc, empowering? Not really. Sure, the narrative shows us just how ‘pathetic’ and ‘sad’ he is about his messed up relationship with Irina but his experiences bear no real weight on Irina’s narrative. He serves as a plot device through which Irina, a character who is supposed to be very much beyond caring, can inflict the trauma she herself was subjected to. Also, for someone who goes on scathing takes about ‘white people’ who pretend they are not ‘white’ but dance to The Smiths in this 'post-racist-Morrissey’ era and expresses frustration about the misogyny and classism rampant in her day-to-day life…it seemed weird that she would think sh*t like this ("I know I’m white, but there’s just a lot of white people White People-ing in a very small area, like it’s just some very, very densely packed mayo, you know? Densely packed mayo, jiggling about, doesn’t know what to do with its arms, doesn’t know what to do with its feet, undulating loosely, barely in time to the rhythm.") but actually says sh*t like this to the mixed-race boy she is toying around with (‘It’s fine for you being out in this heat; you tan. You’re always tan. You look like you’ve just been on holiday or something,’) or this (Japenese/Korean girls being the 'same thing'). It would have made more sense if she’d said that first thing out loud, to impress her peers with how comfortably she can talk about whiteness and make them feel inadequate and less savvy (after all wasn't she supposed to enjoy feeling superior to others?), and to ‘merely’ think the other two as to say them out loud in front of someone who is not white, and who she had identified as ‘sensitive’, and risk that he would see her for who she truly was. She, later on, writes a transphobic email to someone trans which again, was just gratuitous yet seemed included for laughs, and made me question why she would do that if this person could use that to prove to others that she is in fact awful. Why bother with all that gaslighting of your acquaintances if you then don’t give a sh*t about being exposed...? We are previously told that she is manipulative AF. She fools men and has her pathetic bff convinced they are friends to start with. Although she wants to transgress accepted norms of behaviour she knows these norms are there to begin with so in certain spaces she comports herself in a certain way, her art is the only indicator that she is into some smutty kinky stuff. I did not find her inconsistencies to be realistic or to result in a nuanced character. It seemed that the story didn’t really know what kind of character it wanted us to read about so it went all over the place. I wish that the story had committed to paint her as a morally reprehensible character we were meant not to like.
The other characters are one-note and just as unrealistic. They would not be out of place in an episode of Family Guy or Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Speaking of Tarantino if you thought that Uma Thurman's character in that or Kill Bill have some merit…well, you might like Boy Parts after all. This book radiates the kind of feminist energy that Cara Delevingne wearing that ‘peg the patriarchy’ outfit at the met gala gives. Trying to be provoking in a puerile way. And I can forgive a lack of intersectionality and dimension if say this, like Plath's Bell Jar, had been published in the 1960s. But it wasn't so…anche no.
Anyway, the side characters are just as boring as Irina herself. Some of them are downright insulting. We have someone who exists to be the transman who is the butt of the joke for many comments made by Irina. He makes two or possibly three appearances where she makes comments about his height, barbs that are meant to make him feel inadequate and not masculine enough, and later on writes that disgusting email to him where she goes on about identity politics and claims that he is solely drawing upon his personal experiences to produce art (when she is doing that very same thing…get it? ah! ). Flo (i had to check her name, that's how memorable she is) is a rip off of Reva from MYORAR who exists to be the classic female friend in love with our female protagonist who does not and will not ever reciprocate her feelings. I am so f*cking tired of books that make the mc bisexual because it’s edgy and ‘different’ but then proceed to have said character almost exclusively engage in sexual/romantic relationships with men. This character will rarely if ever acknowledge or indicate that she finds people who are not men attractive. She will have a friend who is a lesbian or in this case a bi friend, who is in love with her. The narrative will mention towards the very start or the very end that she did have a relationship with a woman once and call it a day. They don't even try to explore the mc's internalised homophobia/biphobia. Here we have a line about Irina preferring men to women and that's kind of it.
[review continued in comment section due to word count]
vague and not so vague spoilers below
I am befuddled by the ratings and reviews singing this book’s praises. This is one of those cases where I am forced to ask myself: did I read the same book as everybody else? And before you @ me, no, I did not dislike this book because it is work of satire centred on an (exaggeratedly) intentionally unlikeable main character. Some of my favorite books focus on people who are varying degrees of horrible or 'messy' (my year of rest and relaxation, luster, madame bovary, sula, pretend i’m dead, you exist too much, apartment, symptomatic, these violent delights, and a lot of the stuff written by authors such as shirley jackson, danzy senna, and joyce carol oates). I also like characters like Hannibal or Villanelle. I read Lolita and while it did repulse me (as intended) I didn’t hate it because it was from the pov of a p*dophile. And I am fond of the 'she’s not feeling too good' subgenre, contemporary books that are characterized by a caustic tone and explore the lives of women who are, you guessed it, not feeling too good and are depicted as alienated and self-sabotaging … I also do not have a problem with books combining dark humor with violence, My Sister the Serial Killer is a fave of mine. And a few months ago I was enthralled and disturbed by Titane directed by Julia Ducournau (who actually gets a mention in boy parts). All of this to say is that I can deal with and even appreciate characters who for whatever reason do, think, or say things that are ‘frowned’ upon or downright evil. I would go as far as to say that I prefer flawed characters over flawless/uber-likeable characters (very edgy of me, i know). My only caveat is that I have to find said unlikable characters interesting: Emma Bovary, for instance, is not a particularly clever character, you could say she is quite the opposite. She’s naive, pathetic, obnoxious, solipsistic, cruel, and superficial…but I found her acts of self-dramatization to be both fascinating and a source of great amusement. Ottessa Moshfregh’s narrator in MYORAR is nasty (she is awful to her supposed best friend, callous, narcissistic, morbid, and says/thinks offensive things about many groups of people). Did I condone her actions in the novel? No. Did I find her f*cked up sense of humor to be highly addictive? Yes. This is all to say that Irina being a stronza who engages in ‘bad’ behaviour, is not why I didn’t like this book. The reason why I did not like this book has less to do with her being an unlikable c*nt and more to do with her being boring as f*ck. Her internal monologue is repetitive, but not even in a realistic navel-gazey way, like Selin’s narration is in The Idiot, but in an incredibly affected way that just comes across as the book desperately trying to present this character as some counter-culture edgelady, who repeatedly ‘transgresses’ accepted norms of behaviours and—shock horror—flips the ‘male gaze’ on its head by being the one behind the camera. Maybe if this book had come out in the 80s, I would be more inclined to forgive or accept its many shortcomings, but since it was published in 2020 I have a harder time reconciling myself with its unimaginative and superficial exploration of female sexuality, the male gaze, and female rage. There is nothing clever about the way the narrative represents and discusses these themes. The narrative is very much all flash, no substance (tutto fumo e niente arrosto) as it not only mistakes shock value for real horror but it operates under the false assumption that gratuitous or otherwise sensationalistic content is subversive and thought-provoking. If this book had actually been disturbing maybe then I could have overlooked its pulpy and overt storyline…but it isn’t. Funnily enough the story’s numerous floundering attempts at edginess, but these feel dated and painfully affected, on the lines of Awad's Bunny or Mariana Enríquez who at least do not settle for mid-tier levels of offensive but f*cking commit.
Boy Parts reads like a short story that has been stretched beyond its expiry date. The ‘hook’, that of a ‘pervy’ female photographer, had potential for the first 30% of the narrative. Then things just get messy, and not a good kind of messy where I am enthralled by our mc’s unreliable and increasingly disconcerting narrative, but messy in a poorly executed kind of way. The writing changes slightly, but not in a believably organic way that reflects the main character’s spiralling mental health. The book’s satire is devoid of substance or bite. The caricatures populating this narrative are neither amusing nor particularly provocative. Some characters come across as heavy-handed attempts at capturing a certain type of person, while either serve no function other than to exist so the narrator can prove to the readers how nasty she is. The story could have been a lot more effective if the tone had been camped up, so we could have something along the lines of Jennifer’s Body (which is by no means a perfect film but at least it's entertaining and self-aware). Or maybe if the book had gone for a more elliptical stream-of-consciousness type of storytelling, a la Clarice Lispector, maybe then I would have liked it more. But what we got just did not work for me at all. There was something profoundly simplistic about the way these themes are explored and the narrator is one of the dullest galls I have ever had the misfortune to read about. Being a tall and sexy white Northern who thinks she’s the f*cking hardcore because she likes to take kinky photos of men she deems ‘beta’...yeah. The way the book satirizes England's art scene is banal, we get unfunny lines about identity politics and artists such as Tracey Emin. The narrative doesn’t convey Irina’s creative process in a convincing way, in fact, I was left with the impression that—and here i must briefly break from my death of the author approach and acknowledge the existence of the author—whoever was behind the story was either not particularly familiar with photography or not interested in going into detail about it (as i said this an impression i formed, not a fact). As examinations of female creativity go, this one is derivative and unsatisfying. I mean, compared to We Play Ourselves, Self-Portrait with Boy, and Generation Loss (all of whom happen to focus on queer young women who are not portrayed as exclusively interested in men and in replicating tired dom/sub dynamics) Boy Parts just doesn’t go much into depth when it comes to Irina and her changing relationship to her photography. I didn’t feel that she actually felt passionate about these photos, rather, we are told what she did at a school, and she relates the art she produced in that period in a very meh way, and now she gets horny when she tells men to pose in vanilla sub positions, while she occasionally plays the dom role (stepping on them and sh*t). Like, wow. How edgy. And you might say that the narrative is less concerned about mapping out the creative process preceding these photos than with over-emphasising what the photos themselves signify. Male gaze who? Uhm. Sure. Thing is, this kind of obvious ‘appropriation’ of the male gaze and the misogyny often underlining said gaze is not new nor thought-provoking. Quite the opposite in fact. I found the logic at play in the narrative to be highly sus: Irina experiences misogyny and is objectified by the male gaze; Irina perpetuates misogyny + misandry and objectifies men, her models in particular. Irina has a sexual encounter where the partner doesn’t listen to her when she says she wants to be on top. He ignores and demands her to scream for him, yanking her hair. She says that since he is going to ignore her he ‘could put his back into it’. He takes this as a confirmation that she ‘likes it rough’. Quelle surprise, she later has sex with someone she deems weak who asks her to slap him she starts hitting him until he starts crying and this leads to the classic ‘victim becomes abuser’ kind of observation that doesn’t really go deeper than that. If anything it is annoying that we get that scene just so the mc can have this dark eureka moment. Early in the story, Irina goes to a party where she is meeting up with a guy who is there to make fun of the ‘I’m a Nice Guy Really’ type of men who claim they are feminists while trying to wrangle themselves out of being accused of SA. Anyway, she goes to this party with her spineless friend who reminds her that even if she acts all hardcore she is a vulnerable woman. Our mc makes a joke about being raped by the guys she’s hanging out with and what later follows is an intentionally unclear scene where it seems that this guy the mc went to see tried to r*pe her while she was passed out or was otherwise incapacitated and therefore not being able to give consent. I really hated how timed this whole thing was. It was rather tasteless. I have come across other books that punish female characters who are confident in their sexuality or sexually active by resulting in scenes where they are SA or need a man to ‘save’ them. And here…this whole r*pe subplot seems just there for shock value and nothing else. The narrative seems to forget about it, more intent on emphasizing how edgy and obscene the mc is. F*cking hell. Can we not?! I am not saying that I want every story to include r*pe or SA to be serious and to exclusively revolve around this. However, the way the narrative meanders about without any real direction or without the kind of piercing commentary that makes up for vacuous storylines…I am left wondering why, why, why did we get this scene? Especially when the narrative seems confused about the kind of character Irina is. It seemed we were meant to perceive her as a vile character. Not quite a Humbert Humbert type of figure but someone who is working their way towards being the female equivalent of Patrick Bateman. She’s apathetic, has an inflated sense of self, experiences moments of dissociation where she observes the people around her with a mixture of superiority and detachment seems to categorize men in a way that is all the rage in the manosphere, and makes no compunction about transgressing accept norms of behaviour, engaging in sadistic behaviour, or deriving pleasure from what her society deems taboo (r*pe fantasies etc.). She can also perform certain roles, such as that of the Manic Pixie Girl, to her advantage, for example when she wants to attract the kind of men who would be into that type of girl. Irina, so far, seems a satirical take on the femme fatale. Yet, we also get so many instances that go against what this kind of characterization is trying to establish. For instance, she forgets that she has to perform a certain role and says whatever the f*ck comes to her because she’s such a girlboss. Sometimes she would make observations or remarks that would be believable if they originated from someone ‘normal’ or who was not shown to have psychopathic traits. For example, after that guy forces himself on her…she wonders about whether she really wanted rough sex and why do women feel that they have to say yes to rough sex etc…which is a valid af point but I did not believe that someone like Irina would even bother to have such thoughts. She should have been annoyed that someone of no consequence had physically overpowered her. Previously her response to being SA at the party was to be annoyed that that non-entity guy had the gall to try to r*pe her. But then we are meant to believe that she was in fact traumatized by this so much so that now she herself is subjecting others to the type of trauma she was victim to. Like…what is going on. And don’t get me started on how large chunks of the narrative make her abuse of men seem so f*cking transgressive and hardcore when it was anything but. There is a storyline involving, you guessed it, ‘boy parts’ that was just a rip off from American Psycho (in that we are meant to question the veracity of irina’s recollection of these violent events). Anyhow, the man who Irina abuses most happens to be a lot younger than her and, unlike her, despite the story's initial attempts at painting her as a struggling artist, her name is known in artsy circles and she can afford her living expense and the type of materials required to print out her edgy photos, he works at Tesco. Additionally, he is mixed-race, possibly queer, and was involved with someone abusive (emotional abuse is still abuse fellas). So, did I find Irina's SA him, gaslighting him, humiliating him, mistreating him, etc, empowering? Not really. Sure, the narrative shows us just how ‘pathetic’ and ‘sad’ he is about his messed up relationship with Irina but his experiences bear no real weight on Irina’s narrative. He serves as a plot device through which Irina, a character who is supposed to be very much beyond caring, can inflict the trauma she herself was subjected to. Also, for someone who goes on scathing takes about ‘white people’ who pretend they are not ‘white’ but dance to The Smiths in this 'post-racist-Morrissey’ era and expresses frustration about the misogyny and classism rampant in her day-to-day life…it seemed weird that she would think sh*t like this ("I know I’m white, but there’s just a lot of white people White People-ing in a very small area, like it’s just some very, very densely packed mayo, you know? Densely packed mayo, jiggling about, doesn’t know what to do with its arms, doesn’t know what to do with its feet, undulating loosely, barely in time to the rhythm.") but actually says sh*t like this to the mixed-race boy she is toying around with (‘It’s fine for you being out in this heat; you tan. You’re always tan. You look like you’ve just been on holiday or something,’) or this (Japenese/Korean girls being the 'same thing'). It would have made more sense if she’d said that first thing out loud, to impress her peers with how comfortably she can talk about whiteness and make them feel inadequate and less savvy (after all wasn't she supposed to enjoy feeling superior to others?), and to ‘merely’ think the other two as to say them out loud in front of someone who is not white, and who she had identified as ‘sensitive’, and risk that he would see her for who she truly was. She, later on, writes a transphobic email to someone trans which again, was just gratuitous yet seemed included for laughs, and made me question why she would do that if this person could use that to prove to others that she is in fact awful. Why bother with all that gaslighting of your acquaintances if you then don’t give a sh*t about being exposed...? We are previously told that she is manipulative AF. She fools men and has her pathetic bff convinced they are friends to start with. Although she wants to transgress accepted norms of behaviour she knows these norms are there to begin with so in certain spaces she comports herself in a certain way, her art is the only indicator that she is into some smutty kinky stuff. I did not find her inconsistencies to be realistic or to result in a nuanced character. It seemed that the story didn’t really know what kind of character it wanted us to read about so it went all over the place. I wish that the story had committed to paint her as a morally reprehensible character we were meant not to like.
The other characters are one-note and just as unrealistic. They would not be out of place in an episode of Family Guy or Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Speaking of Tarantino if you thought that Uma Thurman's character in that or Kill Bill have some merit…well, you might like Boy Parts after all. This book radiates the kind of feminist energy that Cara Delevingne wearing that ‘peg the patriarchy’ outfit at the met gala gives. Trying to be provoking in a puerile way. And I can forgive a lack of intersectionality and dimension if say this, like Plath's Bell Jar, had been published in the 1960s. But it wasn't so…anche no.
Anyway, the side characters are just as boring as Irina herself. Some of them are downright insulting. We have someone who exists to be the transman who is the butt of the joke for many comments made by Irina. He makes two or possibly three appearances where she makes comments about his height, barbs that are meant to make him feel inadequate and not masculine enough, and later on writes that disgusting email to him where she goes on about identity politics and claims that he is solely drawing upon his personal experiences to produce art (when she is doing that very same thing…get it? ah! ). Flo (i had to check her name, that's how memorable she is) is a rip off of Reva from MYORAR who exists to be the classic female friend in love with our female protagonist who does not and will not ever reciprocate her feelings. I am so f*cking tired of books that make the mc bisexual because it’s edgy and ‘different’ but then proceed to have said character almost exclusively engage in sexual/romantic relationships with men. This character will rarely if ever acknowledge or indicate that she finds people who are not men attractive. She will have a friend who is a lesbian or in this case a bi friend, who is in love with her. The narrative will mention towards the very start or the very end that she did have a relationship with a woman once and call it a day. They don't even try to explore the mc's internalised homophobia/biphobia. Here we have a line about Irina preferring men to women and that's kind of it.
[review continued in comment section due to word count]
December 12, 2021
reread: absolute banger/masterpiece/easy 5 stars etc. eliza clark if you’re reading this i’m waiting for your next book
sometimes when you read books written by male authors, particularly older books, almost every female character in the book is subjected to a rather scrutinising description of their body and appearance. in ‘boy parts’, however, eliza clark turns this on its head, employing a fetishistic female gaze instead of the infamous ‘male gaze’ which we’re all used to.
this book is dark and twisted, but simultaneously humorous and incredibly captivating. irina herself is a fascinating character, mostly because she’s incredibly unlikeable and quite frankly, just a terrible person. she manipulates everyone around her and is just downright cruel most of the time, but she’s also very witty and you’re further drawn into the story just to find out what she’s going to say next.
irina as an unreliable narrator works really well, and i think that books with unreliable narrators always leave a lasting impression; you’re left wondering if any of what you just read actually happened, if the character you’ve been following in your head is really just a lie. this is definitely the feeling you’re left with once you reach the rather hallucinogenic end of this book, but the wild ride to get there is pretty fun.
sometimes when you read books written by male authors, particularly older books, almost every female character in the book is subjected to a rather scrutinising description of their body and appearance. in ‘boy parts’, however, eliza clark turns this on its head, employing a fetishistic female gaze instead of the infamous ‘male gaze’ which we’re all used to.
this book is dark and twisted, but simultaneously humorous and incredibly captivating. irina herself is a fascinating character, mostly because she’s incredibly unlikeable and quite frankly, just a terrible person. she manipulates everyone around her and is just downright cruel most of the time, but she’s also very witty and you’re further drawn into the story just to find out what she’s going to say next.
irina as an unreliable narrator works really well, and i think that books with unreliable narrators always leave a lasting impression; you’re left wondering if any of what you just read actually happened, if the character you’ve been following in your head is really just a lie. this is definitely the feeling you’re left with once you reach the rather hallucinogenic end of this book, but the wild ride to get there is pretty fun.
July 4, 2022
wattpadification of american psycho
December 13, 2022
Simultaneously unhinged, hilarious, and depressing. Being in the MC’s head was a very surreal and toxic experience, one that I won’t forget anytime soon!!
Highly recommend and understand the hype, but just a heads up, this is definitely one of those, “no plot just vibes”, books.
Highly recommend and understand the hype, but just a heads up, this is definitely one of those, “no plot just vibes”, books.
June 25, 2021
Not as tense or edgy as it thinks it is, this takes an inordinately long time to become interesting, but only then in a sub-American Psycho homage. The main character is distinctly unappealing, which can sometimes work, but not here, as there is no sense of why she became so morally vacuous in the first place. There are occasional moments of dry wit, but not enough to sustain what turns out to be a tiring, wafer-thin plot. A good editor would have helped, but the writer's inexperience shines through, though she may have the chops to mature.
May 9, 2022
Ever had that one abusive, manipulative & lowkey psychotic girl-friend that probably fucked half of your life up.... But you still always came back for more?
Not gonna lie, this book might've triggered some of my PTSD.
Random thoughts
➥ Heroine reminded me of Effy
➥ VERY BRITISH (in the best way)
➥ Why go to a therapist when you have Uber drivers
Not gonna lie, this book might've triggered some of my PTSD.
Random thoughts
➥ Heroine reminded me of Effy
➥ VERY BRITISH (in the best way)
➥ Why go to a therapist when you have Uber drivers
February 2, 2021
nothing happens. NOTHING.
i expected this to be a really interesting read, but it was just 264 pages of following the thoughts of a protagonist. definitely not the experience i was hoping to have.
the main character is so unlikeable—which isn’t an inherently bad thing—it doesn’t work in the context of this novel as there is no development or characterization that makes the reader interested in her “story” (if there is any story happening) in the slightest
this book is just not what it thinks it is. it’s not as edgy, witty or unique as it thinks it is being. it also needs a lot of editing. and i mean a lot. you could have just made me read the last three chapters and i still would have gotten the “story”.
90% of my time reading this novel was me wondering if what i am reading right now would have any importance later on. now looking back, it didn’t.
i expected this to be a really interesting read, but it was just 264 pages of following the thoughts of a protagonist. definitely not the experience i was hoping to have.
the main character is so unlikeable—which isn’t an inherently bad thing—it doesn’t work in the context of this novel as there is no development or characterization that makes the reader interested in her “story” (if there is any story happening) in the slightest
this book is just not what it thinks it is. it’s not as edgy, witty or unique as it thinks it is being. it also needs a lot of editing. and i mean a lot. you could have just made me read the last three chapters and i still would have gotten the “story”.
90% of my time reading this novel was me wondering if what i am reading right now would have any importance later on. now looking back, it didn’t.
February 21, 2024
this is the most disturbing, sickening, and hypnotising book i’ve ever read and i need MORE. the unreliable narration, the critique of gender roles/power dynamics, and dark social commentary with such an addictive writing style was exquisite. some people are calling this girlboss american psycho, but patrick bateman could never be irina sturges !!!!
honestly idk how to recommend this book to others without seeming psychotic, but i will never stop promoting the unhinged female manipulator genre.
honestly idk how to recommend this book to others without seeming psychotic, but i will never stop promoting the unhinged female manipulator genre.
August 2, 2021
oh wow wowowowowow this book is fucking incredible!! horrible, petty, unlikable, manipulative, sociopathic female main character. i mean she's just awful isn't she??? but i loved her!! lot's of clever references to pop culture that aren't annoying. super relevant and rooted in the now as the reviewers say. gets super dark and surreal at the end. just amazing!!
June 2, 2022
diversity win! the female manipulator and deranged fetish artist woman is bisexual
August 4, 2020
For an author whose entire online presence is built on wokeness (I found this book through her Guardian interview and then her twitter) there’s some problematic shit in here. Rampant fatphobia, Japanese and Korean women are “practically the same thing”, use of “lame” etc. Really wanted to like it as she’s from the north aswell.
EDIT: downgraded to one star after the author shamed this review on you guessed it...Twitter. I’m relatively new to good reads and thought this was a safe space to share my reviews (not many of my friends read and was hoping to find community here), I didn’t expect to be publicly mocked for it. Was actually shaking reading her tweets. Wow.
EDIT: downgraded to one star after the author shamed this review on you guessed it...Twitter. I’m relatively new to good reads and thought this was a safe space to share my reviews (not many of my friends read and was hoping to find community here), I didn’t expect to be publicly mocked for it. Was actually shaking reading her tweets. Wow.
July 3, 2023
Wow, I’m not sure where to start with this book!
I guess firstly I find it hard to like a book when the main character is so unlikeable and this one was pretty vile! Despite this I also found her to be witty and the writing to be good enough for it not to bother me as much as it usually would.
Without revealing too much it took an interesting turn around 70% into the book which added a whole extra layer to theme of the young but jaded pretty girl fed up with her life.
I think this will be a memorable read for me
I guess firstly I find it hard to like a book when the main character is so unlikeable and this one was pretty vile! Despite this I also found her to be witty and the writing to be good enough for it not to bother me as much as it usually would.
Without revealing too much it took an interesting turn around 70% into the book which added a whole extra layer to theme of the young but jaded pretty girl fed up with her life.
I think this will be a memorable read for me
August 17, 2023
Well... okay then.
I really don't even feel qualified to write a review for this book. What happened here? I don't know. I don't really possess the high emotional and mental capacity required to actually read and process this kind of stuff. But alas, here I am.
Boy Parts may just take the prize for the most disturbing book I've read this year for a number of reasons. Our main girl, Irina, is this manipulative psychopath of a woman who takes erotic and explicit photographs (fetish art) of young men for a living. As it's from a first-person pov, we get to see her inner monologue and thoughts which was super interesting. We get to read as she goes through these strange and obsessive behaviors and falls into this downward spiral into madness.
If there was one critique I'd have on it, though, I'd just say that I wasn't a huge fan of the writing. It felt slightly clunky at times and certain parts didn't flow well. I also didn't really like the dialogue which I thought was formatted a little weird and maybe could have been a little more realistic?
Boy Parts was such an interesting character study which explored power dynamics within relationships and society as a whole. Eliza Clark did an amazing job with this incredibly original debut and I was intrigued from the first page. 4 stars.
*Note* Boy Parts does include a number of mature themes and content inlcuding lots of drugs, sex, language, sexual abuse, and violence. Please check the trigger warnings before you read.
I really don't even feel qualified to write a review for this book. What happened here? I don't know. I don't really possess the high emotional and mental capacity required to actually read and process this kind of stuff. But alas, here I am.
Boy Parts may just take the prize for the most disturbing book I've read this year for a number of reasons. Our main girl, Irina, is this manipulative psychopath of a woman who takes erotic and explicit photographs (fetish art) of young men for a living. As it's from a first-person pov, we get to see her inner monologue and thoughts which was super interesting. We get to read as she goes through these strange and obsessive behaviors and falls into this downward spiral into madness.
If there was one critique I'd have on it, though, I'd just say that I wasn't a huge fan of the writing. It felt slightly clunky at times and certain parts didn't flow well. I also didn't really like the dialogue which I thought was formatted a little weird and maybe could have been a little more realistic?
Boy Parts was such an interesting character study which explored power dynamics within relationships and society as a whole. Eliza Clark did an amazing job with this incredibly original debut and I was intrigued from the first page. 4 stars.
*Note* Boy Parts does include a number of mature themes and content inlcuding lots of drugs, sex, language, sexual abuse, and violence. Please check the trigger warnings before you read.
July 12, 2022
this was wild. how do i admit that i loved this book without looking like an actual psycho?
"i explain to him that nothing matters, and nothing lasts. everyone forgets, and everything disappears. the things you do, the things you are; it’s all nothing. would anyone miss you, if you went away? would anyone look for you? would anyone listen, or even care, if i hurt you? if i put my hands around your neck and crushed your windpipe and chopped you up, would anyone find you? and if it’s a no to any of these, did you even exist in the first place?"
"i explain to him that nothing matters, and nothing lasts. everyone forgets, and everything disappears. the things you do, the things you are; it’s all nothing. would anyone miss you, if you went away? would anyone look for you? would anyone listen, or even care, if i hurt you? if i put my hands around your neck and crushed your windpipe and chopped you up, would anyone find you? and if it’s a no to any of these, did you even exist in the first place?"
March 4, 2023
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Did I really just read this whole book in a single day? Yes. I didn't even mean for it to happen, just, once I started reading, I couldn't stop. BOY PARTS is a book I've had my eye on for a while but I was afraid to read it because so many reviews were saying it was super gory and comparing it to AMERICAN PSYCHO. Now that I've read it for myself, I can say... it is like AMERICAN PSYCHO, but better, because it delves into a lot of amazing social commentary about sexism, society's inability to see women as the perpetrators of violence because of that sexism, "woke" culture, art and how we consume it, and so much more. Fuck Bret Easton Ellis, man. If you're going to read about one unhinged, narcissistic psychopath this year, pick this one.
In the beginning, with its stream of consciousness style of narration and the way it picks apart the disaffected youth culture of young working class British girls, BOY PARTS really reminded me of GREEN GIRL. Irina, the heroine, is a fetish photographer who enjoys taking pictures of men who aren't classically attractive. She poses them in photographs in ways that subvert the male gaze-heavy fetish photographs that show women in peril or pain. Subverting the status quo. Which sounds all right, until you start to see the woman behind the art: is she making a statement or does she just enjoy hurting people? Why does she like horror movies that ape snuff films, and banned foreign movies with lurid rape scenes? Why does she keep seeing people with pieces of glass in their eyes?
This is a weird, trippy, nasty book. There is violence but for the most part, it's pretty tasteful. The author doesn't wallow in it, which I appreciated. I will say that there is a cat death: it's mentioned twice, both times depicted on page. It made me really sad but it wasn't as graphic as what happens to the people in this book, which somehow still didn't gross me out as much as the opening paragraph where the heroine is about to drunkenly regurgitate a sandwich. I liked the slow unraveling of her sanity and the way that she's an unreliable narrator in her own story. I think some people use unreliable narrators as a narrative Get Out of Jail Free card, which-- no, don't do that. But when it's done right, it can add an extra layer to the story, focusing you to squint your eyes and study the plot through a smeary lens.
Irina is a truly chilling character but the people she surrounds herself aren't much better. Which maybe isn't much of a surprise if you ask yourself-- what kind of person would willingly stay in the orbit of a sociopath? The cast of secondary characters is vast and layered, and part of the fun of this book is sticking around and seeing what chaos Irina will wreak in the name of her art next. This was a great book to chase WOMAN, EATING with, and if unhinged female artist characters are the new black, I know what I'll be swathing myself in this season. I can't wait to read Eliza Clark's next book, but I have to say-- the fact that she wrote a character like this slightly terrifies me.
5 stars
October 11, 2021
i never knew spending 300 pages inside the mind of a twisted, narcissistic, vindictive psychopath could be so much fun!!
May 6, 2024
British white girl photographer from up north with an eating disorder shoots boys and I’m moved
Maybe 4.5
Maybe 4.5
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