Lately I’ve been reading books that seemed like a sure hit, only to be left underwhelmed. The reverse has also been true so I can’t complain much.

Penance is a fake true crime book telling the story of how three teenage girls killed a classmate on the night of the Brexit vote. Set in N. Yorkshire, where I spent my own teenage years, I was drawn to the familiar setting and the unique style of the book.

The book is made up of interviews, podcast transcripts, dramatizations, history sidebars and tumblr posts. This was a fresh approach, however, and perhaps this only applies to the eARC, it wasn’t always clear where one source finished and another started and I was sometimes unsure who ‘I’ was.

I really expected to love this book and I think writing it in this style is impressive. As there are so many rave reviews (and believe me, I want to conform) let me tell you what didn’t work for me:

It’s too long – and felt it. Some sections seemed to go on for a long time without adding much (most of the dramatized scenes) and others seemed irrelevant (an entire account of a fictional school shooting, town history). I understand that the variety of sources is what makes the book, but it needed a faster pace.

It’s repetitive. Moving through different points of view means that information is often repeated without much expansion.

There’s no mystery. The crime is explained at the start and the rest of the book serves to tell us how all parties arrived there, giving more information about backgrounds, etc. However, I felt there were few surprises, and I would’ve liked a reveal to change our first impressions.

Not a hit for me, but I’m definitely in the minority. And I will go back and read Boy Parts, which I’ve had since release!

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC!

Penance is a novel about a "true crime" set in not-quite-Bridlington, full of seedy characters and teenage internet creepypasta drama spilling out into the real world. The tabloid hack who's writing the definitive book about the crime is a damaged bereaved parent and his honesty is questionable - what's the real truth?

I ended up listening to the audiobook version of the book and stayed up late to carry on listening because I was so hooked on the story and desperate to know what happened to all the girls.

A highly recommended read.

I found the first 15% of this to be brilliant and could understand why so many people gave it a 5 star rating. However shortly after the main events had been revealed, it became incredibly dull and boring for me.

I managed to keep reading until the end but struggled to remember which characters were which and did not care about the characters enough. Major trigger warnings of death / self harm etc. throughout, so please be aware of these if you are going to read it.

This book is a true gem. It's dark, it's twisted, it's sometimes funny. It pokes fun at all the true crime podcasts out there and the people who have an unhealthy obsession with murders.

However, this book is not only centered on the murder, it's also the portrait of a town that seems haunted by all the awful things that have taken place there. It shows the complexities of humans and how their misery can lead to very twisted crimes.

What is truly remarkable about this book is the way it is narrated. Clark plays with form, with unreliable narrators, with the notion of an absolute "truth". You will be left utterly confused and impressed at the same time.

I absolutely love it and will recommend it to my customers !

4.5

Eliza Clarke's Penance takes readers on a haunting journey back to the dreadful murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson, a crime that shook the peaceful community of Crow-on-Sea. With meticulous attention to detail, Clarke weaves a complex web of narratives from various perspectives within the town. The book introduces us to journalist Alec Z. Carelli, the driving force behind what is claimed to be the "definitive account" of the tragedy and its lead-up.

The strength of Penance lies in Clarke's mastery of storytelling, as she guides us through the twists and turns of the events surrounding Joan Wilson's murder. The reader is immersed in a suspenseful narrative, expertly constructed through a combination of witness testimonies, intimate interviews with family members, historical research, and chilling correspondence with the very individuals responsible for the crime. The author's ability to blend these sources into a cohesive and gripping tale is a testament to her writing prowess.

As the story unfolds, Penance examines the profound impact of tragedy on the lives of individuals and the broader community. The aftermath of the murder is portrayed vividly, revealing a town grappling with the emotional turmoil and collective trauma left in its wake. Clarke deftly captures the nuanced reactions of the townspeople, their complex relationships, and the unraveling of secrets that further intensify the suspense. The character development is compelling, and each perspective adds a layer of depth to the overall narrative.

Yet, amidst the engrossing storytelling, Penance poses a thought-provoking question: How much of the account presented is true? Clarke introduces an element of uncertainty, challenging readers to question the reliability of the information and the motives behind its construction. This thematic exploration of truth and perception adds an intriguing layer of psychological tension to the novel.

While Penance is undeniably a thrilling and captivating read, there are moments where the novel isn’t relatable, depending on the reader. I wasn’t on the Tumblr scene so a lot of the jargon (despite explanatory footnotes) went over my head.

Penance is a commendable work of fiction, skillfully delving into the aftermath of a heinous crime while keeping readers enthralled until the final page. With its well-crafted characters, meticulous research, and a touch of uncertainty, the novel succeeds in delivering a compelling tale of tragedy and its far-reaching consequences. Fans of psychological suspense and intricate storytelling will find themselves thoroughly engrossed in Penance, eager to uncover the truth concealed within the shadows of Crow-on-Sea.

Thank you to Netgalley and Faber & Faber for the digital galley in exchange for my honest review.

A work of fiction disguised as a true crime novel written by a fictional author. A journalist named Alec Carelli has been cancelled on Twitter and seeks his next big break to bring himself back into the limelight. Self-absorbed and deceitful, he moves to the town where a grisly murder took place to pull the obscure story from the residents of Crow-on-Sea.

Three high school girls torture and murder one of their own in this coastal town and burn her alive on the beach. The novel skims the torture and killing of the high school student, Joan Wilson, but largely focuses on the rationale and relationships of her killers.

There is skillful character development even when these characters are first introduced to the reader as Girl A, Girl B, and Girl C. Each of their personalities shines through so clearly from the first page.

Girl A is a rich, stupid girl who bullies others for fun, is obsessed with musicals, daughter of a pro-brexit politician, she lost her childhood best friend in a tragic drowning incident at what is now a haunted waterpark, and believes she can communicate with the spirit world.

Girl B is a reluctant and awkward fan of true crime wikipedias, reading enthusiastically about folklore, horror, and reddit creepypasta. She had been best friends with Joan in primary school but was cast aside for the popular girls as they got older. A perpetual loner, she would prefer to obsess about death, scroll tumblr, and torture her Sims online.

Girl C is the ringleader, armed with a traumatic past, purple prosed fanfiction, unchecked violence, and an unhealthy obsession with an Elliot Rodgers type serving time in prison for a mass murder, she abducts and murders Joan Wilson with the assistance of the others. She has a manifesto but it doesn’t make much sense and she acts impulsively, trying to create what she describes as a pocket of hell.

There’s so much lore about fictional true crime that the characters were obsessed with, and folk lore about the town’s history and backstories. It weaves in true elements to the fiction, comparing the fictional Cherry Creek massacre to the Columbine shootings in 1999.

Told using various medias, journal entries, interviews, tumblr posts, and fanfiction.

It has an effect similar to Daisy Jones and the Six, a fictional story told in such a way that it seems like it could be a real event.

Penance explores an individual’s relationship to true crime and public obsession with murder. Simultaneously, exploring cancel culture and ethics through the fictional author.

It was an enrapturing read.

Eliza Clark is a phenomenal storyteller and this book really shows that. I couldn't put it down and have been recommending it to everyone I speak to! Penance follows a journalist who is writing a novel about a true crime story where 3 teenaged girls murder their fellow student. It goes through the story with accounts from parents, teachers, friends, family members and also scripts from podcasts and other news outlets. In parts you also start to hear about the journalists story in which he lost his own daughter. Unreliable narrator, great plot. Amazing.

“Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes? Did you see the pictures of the body? Did you look for them?

It's been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time.”

Penance is a great read and an extremely clever examination of the true crime trend that ultimately implicates both reader and author in the voyeurism inherent to the genre.

Based on a real crime relocated to a North Yorkshire seaside town, this is that rare book that combines literary skill with the pacing of a thriller.

Penance is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I truly couldn’t put it down. Gripping and compelling, the story Clark crafts is fascinating and the way it is told really elevates it. A sobering comment on the true crime trend.

I’ve been sitting with this one for a while and I’m still not entirely sure what to think about it. I loved Eliza Clark’s debut Boy Parts, and I am one of those many Gen-Zers who has an ‘obsession’ with true crime so this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year.

Every time I think of a criticism of Penance, I’m left wondering if it was done intentionally by Clark, and if it’s part of the critique of our obsession with true crime. These criticisms include the bumbling, meandering storyline, and the excruciating detail about every single aspect of these girls’ lives. A character that should have appeared fleetingly is granted pages and pages here.

Regardless of whether this is intentional or not, it definitely did impact my enjoyment of the novel. The anticipation of learning about the crime keeps you going for a while, but eventually Penance runs out of steam.

The ending, again, feels like it’s trying to convey a very particular message but overall gave me that same unsatisfying feeling of ‘it was all a dream.’ I definitely think I would benefit from a re-read, and I do still thoroughly enjoy Eliza Clark’s writing, I’m just not sure this lived up to the high expectations I had for it.

I loved this book, it makes you take a deep look at aspects of the true crime industry.

You start to think about the narrative the person presenting you the information is trying to weave and how you can easily be steared by the information provided. Based on the way events were presented and phrased Carelli really shaped who you felt empathy for and who you felt distain for.

I can't wait to grab my physical copy.

Eliza Clark, Penance: A pretend true crime story, like a dark and chaotic Graeme Macrae Burnet novel, Penance is told from the point of view of Alec Z. Carelli, a journalist and thoroughly unlikeable narrator who is writing a book about the murder of a teenager in an English seaside town by a group of her classmates. It’s a real jaunt.

A fictional true-crime novel, Penance takes on a constellation of formats- Tumblr posts, interviews, podcast transcripts, and literary prose are all used to fill in the details of the murder of a teenage girl at the hands of 3 classmates.
Set in the seaside village of Crow-On-Sea, the book takes a detailed look at the history and community of this fictional town. There is a lot of information to take in, and many twists and turns along the way.
Needless to say, this is a very different project than Clark's debut novel Boy Parts. Penance is ambitious and sprawling, and Clark clearly had a very clear vision of this crime (as well as other fictional crimes that are referenced throughout the book). As a straightforward recounting of this crime story, I think this book is incredibly successful.
By the end of the story, however, it becomes clear that Clark has greater sights - an attempt to subvert the true crime genre at large that ultimately falls flat. There aren't actually many new ideas presented or interesting ways that the story is twisted - this book feels like more of a love letter to the true crime genre rather than a criticism of it. This could just be a misstep when it came to the book's marketing, but I did wish it took things a bit further.

‘Penance’ takes the form of a (fictitious) true crime novel that centers on a trio of girls who commit a despicable crime against a fellow classmate. Piecing together snippets from interviews, podcasts, and personal statements, the girls' actions and motivations are thoroughly examined to ultimately offer up a critique of certain online communities and true crime content.

If this book was presented to me under a pseudonym, I would've never guessed it to be the highly anticipated follow-up to Boy Parts. Whilst I commend Eliza Clark for trying something different from her much-lauded debut, I struggled to understand why she chose this form of novel, at least until the very end.

The story is definitely there and the more I read, the more I was interested in finding out more about these teenage girls and what led them to committing such an awful act. Yet I struggled over and over because of the format, which comprehensively delves into the backstory of each of the girls involved. It wasn't until I was about two thirds of the way through that I realised the backstory *is* the story.

With that all said, this is still a pretty great book. It has a lot to say about the questionable nature of true crime media, the struggles of growing up, and the complexity of teenage relationships. Clark does a pretty remarkable job of fleshing out the different dynamics between these girls and building up a vivid image of their locale. Some of the writing around this fictitious town probably could've been cut out to make the novel a bit snappier, as 400+ pages was a bit overkill (no pun intended).

I'd probably recommend this to anyone with an interest in true crime (or at least interested in why it's so popular) or who grew up online with websites like LiveJournal and Tumblr. And if you've read Boy Parts, I'd suggest you approach this with an open mind and try not to have too many expectations!

Side note: this made me want to read something by Janice Hallett—her mystery novels utilise a similar approach to Clark by piecing together the story of a crime through recordings/emails/etc. but (dare I say) in a much more thrilling way.

‘Penance’ is out on the 6th of July. Many thanks to Faber & Faber and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced digital copy to review.

Eliza Clark is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting young writers working today.

Her debut, Boy Parts, was not even my favourite book of 2020, but one of my all-time favourite books.

I am so excited to even hear about Penance, but once I heard the premise and structure, I was fizzing with anticipation.

I was absolutely thrilled to be approved for this!

I absolutely love a book which has multiple perspectives, multiple data sources and timelines so I knew I would love this. I’m also a true crime cynic so I felt this was an intriguing concept from my perspective.

This is a book which is about being a teenage girl and it made me remember how brutal it is to be a teenage girl. The friendships, the fallouts, the drama. It’s also of course a story about murder.

I already want to reread this and know it’s going to be huge.

I can’t wait to see what’s next from Eliza Clark.

I jumped straight from Boy Parts to Penance, and Eliza Clark did not disappoint: this book within a book was a dark and gripping read. Eliza Clark’s vivid writing style made the characters leap off the page, flawed and intriguing.

As you try to discover the truth behind Joan Wilson’s murder, the different accounts keep you on your toes and questioning the previous perspective. Clark explores the difficulties of the teenage experience, weaving a web of social groups, media, fandoms, bullying and life in a small seaside town—all of which come together in a disturbing tapestry that made me flip the pages faster and faster.

Thank you to Netgalley and Faber and Faber for the copy!

Eliza Clark’s Penance is a fictional recreation of one of true crime’s most enduring staples the dead-white-girl story. Presented as a new edition of investigative non-fiction by Alec Carelli, Penance centres on the torture and murder of Yorkshire teenager Joan or Joni Wilson by a group of her fellow schoolgirls in 2016 – we’re told Carelli’s original edition was pulled from the shelves in a manner reminiscent of the fate of real-world, crime writer Paul Harrison’s Mind Games. Carelli is an interesting creation, a washed-up, former journalist who’s not ashamed to admit Penance was a bid to cash in on the phenomenal rise of true crime fuelled by online podcasts like Serial. In Carelli Clark has deliberately constructed a narrator who’s deeply suspect, someone almost impossibly distanced from the crime and the environment he’s supposedly interrogating. He’s ruthless enough to exploit his daughter’s death by suicide to get an interview but he’s also an unthinking, posh bloke who clearly knows nothing about the issues of class, gender, and power that this crime evokes. Clark however, a former true crime enthusiast, clearly does know her stuff, convincingly representing the complexities of the genre and its mostly female followers: from fangirling to fanfic. Here and there dropping breadcrumbs that gradually accumulate to undermine Carelli’s version of so-called “facts.”

Clark’s flagged the drawn-out death of American teen Shanda Sharer as a key inspiration but there are distinctive echoes too of the kind of commercial crime fiction devoured by teenage girls – like Carlene Thompson’s In the Event of my Death which revolves around the aftermath of a similar murder. But, like David Peace in his “Red Riding Trilogy,” Clark seems to be using Joni’s murder and its Yorkshire setting, fictional seaside town Crow-on-Sea, to construct an oblique commentary on fault lines in British society particularly those that crisscross the long-neglected North. Joni’s death takes place on the night of the Brexit referendum, highlighted by making one of the killers, Angelica, the daughter of a UKIP politician eager to see his Brexit dreams fulfilled. Like the many actual seaside towns so significant to pro-Brexit campaigns, the predominantly-white Crow-on-Sea is in the throes of inexorable decline. In a county infamous for high levels of violent crime it’s overshadowed by a cabal of right-wing men, a miniature cesspit of small-scale corruption and exploitation: Angelica’s father shamelessly trades on his relative wealth and local clout; he boasts about his former connection to disgraced celebrity Vance Diamond a serial paedophile once active in the area and a ringer for real-life Jimmy Saville; and another of the killers Dorothy or Dolly Hart seems likely to have been sexually abused by her father, a former Yorkshire police officer.

Carelli, however, seems incapable of sustained analysis, lacking the most basic insights. Instead, his method consists of overwhelming his readers, including page upon page of material devoted to Crow-on-Sea’s history and downfall. Carelli sees himself as on a par with acclaimed true crime writers like Brian Masters, Truman Capote and Gordon Burn yet lacks Masters’s readability or Capote and Burn’s stylistic sophistication. He attempts to compensate for his failings by exhaustively recording everything he can lay his hands on; interviews; screenshots of texts between the killers; reconstructions; even podcast transcripts. Carelli’s evident fondness for concepts of deviant youth, the salacious and the emotive, resurrects lingering questions about voyeurism and the ethics of true crime writing. His perspective on events draws on familiar true crime conventions, a genre in which even the most trivial actions of possible perpetrators and victims are often retrospectively heralded as meaningful, even life-changingly significant. Here, like Damien Echols's accusers – whose case Clark mentions in passing - Carelli makes much of the fact that Joni’s killers were fascinated by the occult, oblivious to the many links to well-established, comparatively-tame, teen subcultures tracing back to films like The Craft - even failing to notice a direct reference to this in an interview. But Clark’s various missteps and misapprehensions allows Clark to raise ongoing questions about bias, indirectly contesting true crime’s claims of “truth” and “objectivity,” carefully exposing their mythical nature. Although their themes sometimes overlap Penance doesn't boast the same relentless pace or visceral immediacy of Boy Parts, and there were sections I found less than engaging - although many of its surface flaws are rooted in Carelli’s idea of what makes a good story. But it’s beautifully researched, consistently intelligent, intriguing, and inventive.

This is Eliza Clark’s second novel and comes shortly after her inclusion in the influential decennial Granta Best of Young British Novelists list (2023 edition).

Her first novel “Boy Parts” has become something of a BookTok sensation – selling 60,000+ copies which is an astonishing figure for a piece of offbeat/satirical transgressive fiction (about in brief a predatory female photographer) published by a small indie press – London’s Influx.

This novel is otherwise very different from her debut – Clark has said “I wanted to show I was a versatile writer with a career ahead of me; I’m not just some one-trick pony who wrote a weird little TikTok book.”.

The set up of the book is that it is in fact a republished version of a book which was withdrawn from the shelves by its publisher in Autumn 2022 after a post-publication furor which led to some now settled legal cases; the book in question being a sensationalist non-fiction true-crime self-styled definitive account of an horrendous murder on the very night of the Brexit vote. As well as the crime aspects the book is also (but less obviously) about the socio-economic and local political decay in a forgotten seaside town (of the type that recorded some of the strongest anti-Brexit votes)

We are told "At around 4:30 a.m., on 23 June 2016, sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson was doused in petrol and set on fire after enduring several hours of torture in a small beach chalet. Her assailants were three other teenaged girls – all four girls attended the same high school. The crime took place in Joan’s hometown of Crow-on-Sea in North Yorkshire. The seaside town sits between Scarborough and Whitby, protruding from the east coast of England like a small finger reaching for the continent."

The author is an investigative crime journalist – Alex Carelli – who lost his job in the phone-hacking scandal, has some success as a true-crime writer (writing about a killer couple and then a missing girl), before rather losing his way and audience just as the true-crime genre had something of an explosion in the early 2010s.

He sees this crime – the sensational details of which he feels were lost in the shock around the Brexit vote (despite one of the killers being the daughter of a notorious UKIP politician), and one he only comes to through some pretty low life horrific-true-crime obsessed websites and podcasts – as the case/book that will relaunch his career and is clearly prepared to take a variety of ethical shortcuts to get and write the story.

His book starts by looking at the victim and then in turn each of the three assailants – Girls A, B,C before the judge waived their anonymity when sentencing them (as well as a fourth girl – Girl D the girlfriend of Girl A - who was originally arrested for the crime).

This is done through a mix of court transcripts, primary interviews (given grudgingly and written up in fairly judgmental and not always reliable terms), written correspondence, writings by the girls (some of which we know was illegally acquired) and even some explicitly imagined reconstructions of likely events – which give a picture not just of what might have lead to the horrific crime but the social and political dynamics of the school the girls attend and the town around which they live.

This would be something of a well-written young adult crime thriller – I was reminded at times of “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” but it has a much darker side.

Most of the girls were Tumblr users – and details of some of their postings are included. Disturbingly at least two of them were obsessed with a dark corner of the internet such as: serial or mass killer fan sites (including fanfiction and insert-self sites) – for example TCC (true crime community) columbiniers and (Clark’s fictional follow on) “creekers”; sites obsessed with “creepypasta” horror content such as the IRL Slenderman meme); Reddit threads discussing paranormal topics inspired by creepypasta say or transgressive “The Sims” mods. And all of this features extensively in Carelli’s writing – both what the girls were interested in and as sites he used to gather information.

I have to say I had decidedly mixed feelings here – Clark is clearly able to navigate this world (and create fictional parts of it as well as some real parts) convincingly and in a non-cringy and non-forced way compared to many authors attempts to include social media or internet in their stories. However, it was a world I would avoid at all costs IRL and which I had something of an aversion to wanting to enter via a novel.

I also felt at times this world and particularly the way that some of the girls convinced themselves that some of the fictionally-originated paranormal ideas could be manifested in their actual lives and not just in the virtual world - as way to take their “Heather” style schoolgirl bullying and power struggles (as an aside even the characters note that their school interactions seem borrowed from US high school films) to a much nastier level was not entirely convincing to me (or it may just be that I did not really want to believe such a thing could happen).

Overall, not the novel for me but the author’s versatility (her next book is a cinematic horror story/speculative fiction set of short stories) is impressive and she is one to watch.

I had been waiting to read this book ever since I saw Eliza Clark announce it on her Twitter! I LOVED Boy parts and so was desperate to read Penance. Penance is an unsettling look at the obsession and morality of true crime and people's obsession with it. Clark perfectly nailed the 2010s internet culture.

I enjoyed this even more than I thought I was going to. It was so easy to get immersed in the story, despite how gruesome it was in places. The way it kept drawing attention to the parasitic and exploitative nature of true crime media made you feel a little bit complicit just by reading the novel, but it was impossible to put down.

The most fascinating part of stories like this and their unreliable narrators, is that you are left not quite knowing what is and is not ‘real’. Every new perspective and twist leaves you a little less sure, and eventually you just have to surrender to the fact that as in life, each character has their own version of the truth in which they are deserving of empathy and a chance to explain. This becomes even more nebulous when you make your setting a high school, where emotions are high, bonds easily broken, grievances build up, small infractions have long-lasting consequences and the minutiae of each day is dissected until it is unrecognisable.

Choosing a middle-aged, male journalist to ‘investigate’ and ‘write’ this book was genius because of the way he viewed the teenage subjects of this story. He leaned so far into the idea of teenage girls as secretive, manipulative, vindictive, vain and histrionic, the girls started to take on parodies of actual teenage girls. As much as he seemed to enjoy tracing the traumas the girls had experienced in their lives, he was also quick to dismiss or undermine the impact these events had on them and he failed to finish joining the dots. Instead he favoured an idea of the girls as strange, ridiculous, chronically online, and easily influenced. This might have been a result of his own daughter’s suicide and his desire to believe that there was something wrong with her rather than the life he had given her – and this formed one of the many stories within a story that made this books so enthralling.

Whether it was recounting local legend, small town politics, corruption and class tensions, or the everyday lives of teenage girls, the author managed to weave a story that was complicated and nuanced and revealing. Each story influenced another, allowing the novel to spiral into a tangled web of cause and effect that was so satisfying to dive into. Throughout the novel there was a failure to take girls and their experiences and their feelings seriously on the part of adults, and I kept thinking about how different girls’ lives would be if that changed.