A review by kate_lemer
Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

Is there any contemporary fiction book that I do not hate? The start of the book is irreverent, vulgar. It is a fresh writing style, a catchy beginning but gets old very fast. 

One quickly learns that Irina is very angry at the world, in an obnoxious, “stump your foot like a spoilt little child” way. It is entertaining in the beginning, but unfortunately, devolves into pure condescension for its sake. The author leaves us with nothing more to her character. Irina summed up in one sentence? It’s not my fault, honest. - not a direct quote but should be. 

It is woke-ism for its sake, but a very hypocritical one at that. I lost count of how many times Irina mentions men looking girly - a textbook example of internalized misogyny perhaps?

While I doubt it’s truly the case, this book reminds me of a very bad knock-off of the Russian Doll TV series. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The hair, the name, the too on-the-nose vulgarity. However, where there is a point to the writing of the Russian Doll, I’m struggling to find anything in this atrocity. To paraphrase Irina - I have no sympathy.

By the time I got past the halfway point, the mere existence of this book started to offend me. I saw a glimmer of hope two thirds in where Irina started to descent into a bout of psychosis, trying to track her past which her mind had terribly skewed. I have to admit, the descent into madness was well written. Descent into madness might be the wrong word for it. It was the slow realisation that you were already mad to begin with, and you lied to yourself about it - Irin tells fantastic stories, in the original sense of the word. Finding the pictures in dvd cases was a very nice touch, very sixth sense-esque.

Unfortunately, that’s where the tension flopped. By the end, one does not reach any satisfaction from reading the book. A waste of time, getting the score it gets only for the part mentioned above.
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