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A review by wetherspoonsgf
Penance by Eliza Clark
5.0
I don’t think I’ve ever done a proper Release Day Hype Read of a proper book that real adults read, so this is fun and was absolutely worth breaking my hardcovers ban for.
Penance is so interesting as meta-fiction that you almost gloss over how well it’s written at points because you’re too busy juggling the meta-mystery of how the book was created and how much of it was real in your head, which is so cool. Clark has maybe found the cheekiest way to write where when she’s Brilliant it’s clearly her, but she’s allowed to be trite at points in the name of constructing her narrator. I almost want to go back and construct my own Pepe Silvia chart in the annotations for what I think actually happened, but I have to let Cillian read it first.
In terms of constructing the journalist narrator I really liked the almost Murukami style ‘here’s the one thing he ALWAYS notices about women, and he’s gonna say it at various inappropriate points, like a dick.’ Very interesting in that regard to have him be basically the only male character in the story - especially given what she’s said about feeling like literature has kind of fully mined the interesting things to say about male violence, because I think how Penance explores the violence of interpretation is, if not genuinely new, incredibly well done.
For all that I was (regrettably) never a teenage girl in school this hits the fucking nail on the head so hard with School Dynamics in a way that feels Real enough to never slip into Mean Girls. Most of all, though, this is a book written by a Poster. Tumblr is arguably the main character, and when we saw her talk about it Oppa Homeless Style, SarahZ, and Strange Aeons all came up. In the same way Boy Parts really hit Acerbic Texts To People You Don’t Like perfectly, this creates three Online Teens perfectly.
I could write like 1000 more words on this about how I think it writes back to Waterland in an interesting way, how funny it is that she name drops Giles Coren at the end, how hard I was slamming the This Character Is Autistic And This Book Has A Lot Of Very Interesting Points About Neurodiversity Bubbling Under The Surface button every 10 pages. Instead, I’ll just say that you should abso fucking lutely read this book if you’ve ever gone on a deep dive about a fucked up fandom or were really annoyed when you found out the Russian Sleep Experiment wasn’t real. Or if you haven’t done that. Just read the book.
Penance is so interesting as meta-fiction that you almost gloss over how well it’s written at points because you’re too busy juggling the meta-mystery of how the book was created and how much of it was real in your head, which is so cool. Clark has maybe found the cheekiest way to write where when she’s Brilliant it’s clearly her, but she’s allowed to be trite at points in the name of constructing her narrator. I almost want to go back and construct my own Pepe Silvia chart in the annotations for what I think actually happened, but I have to let Cillian read it first.
In terms of constructing the journalist narrator I really liked the almost Murukami style ‘here’s the one thing he ALWAYS notices about women, and he’s gonna say it at various inappropriate points, like a dick.’ Very interesting in that regard to have him be basically the only male character in the story - especially given what she’s said about feeling like literature has kind of fully mined the interesting things to say about male violence, because I think how Penance explores the violence of interpretation is, if not genuinely new, incredibly well done.
For all that I was (regrettably) never a teenage girl in school this hits the fucking nail on the head so hard with School Dynamics in a way that feels Real enough to never slip into Mean Girls. Most of all, though, this is a book written by a Poster. Tumblr is arguably the main character, and when we saw her talk about it Oppa Homeless Style, SarahZ, and Strange Aeons all came up. In the same way Boy Parts really hit Acerbic Texts To People You Don’t Like perfectly, this creates three Online Teens perfectly.
I could write like 1000 more words on this about how I think it writes back to Waterland in an interesting way, how funny it is that she name drops Giles Coren at the end, how hard I was slamming the This Character Is Autistic And This Book Has A Lot Of Very Interesting Points About Neurodiversity Bubbling Under The Surface button every 10 pages. Instead, I’ll just say that you should abso fucking lutely read this book if you’ve ever gone on a deep dive about a fucked up fandom or were really annoyed when you found out the Russian Sleep Experiment wasn’t real. Or if you haven’t done that. Just read the book.