Boy Parts by Eliza Clark: book review
Boy Parts is the kind of book that's got a cult following but at this point might as well be as popular on bookstagram as a Rooney novel. It's been a highly recommended book for years, and I've always been intrigued but also a little scared because it's known as an intense, gory novel. Not for the faint of heart is the reputation, shall we say. For some reason, I thought there was cannibalism. There is no cannibalism. I'd read Clark's later novel, Penance, a few years ago and enjoyed it. But after seeing a guy reading Boy Parts at Silent Book Club (he said it was good when I asked but seemed to feel weird about making a statement like that given its content, further making me a bit weary), I wanted to finally see, six years later, what all the hype was about.
And I learned that it's because Boy Parts is a damn good book. It's been a while since I picked up a novel and immediately fell down the rabbit hole from page 1. Like fully tipped head over feet. I finished the book in two or three days, during one of the busiest periods of my life. I kept stealing time to read. I was almost late to school, to the bar, cause I kept telling myself just a few more pages. I read a lot, and I also read a lot for work, so sometimes, even when I recognize a book is good, it's a pretty predictable experience for me. This shook that. This book reminded me from chapter 1 why I got so obsessed with reading in the first place at a time in my life when I I'm feeling some pretty intense burnout.
The voice jumps off the page with grabby hands to pull you under. Irina is a fully formed person from page one as she's navigating an altercation at the bar she works at. The novel moves in an interesting fashion where there's a vague, driving forward progression but a lot of it is told in a collection of memories. For much of the book, Irina is digging through her archive to find pieces from throughout her career for the landmark show she's landed at Hackney Spaces. Doing all this digging starts to dislodge memories, some more disquieting than others, that start to intersect with the current path she's on with her latest obsession and muse, Eddie from Tesco.
Irina scouts men off the street to model for her. She's a fine arts photographer but mostly interested in, I guess, fetish work. Pornographic fine art. But usually that involves some kind of pain or degradation or humiliation of the model. A lot of what she does is motivated by taking the way men have often portrayed women in their art and flipping the script. Objectifying these men who usually aren't classically beautiful but have some kind of appeal to them. She hands them her business card on the bus or at the bar and has them come to her garage studio to shoot. Sometimes, these are nonevents. Other times, they turn into relationships—conquests or drug buddies. Then there are the ones who get violent. What she's doing is inherently dangerous, but she approaches that possibility with such a glowing rage and blatant disregard. The book chronicles her time in art school, receiving critique from her peers and professors, navigating a world run on nepotism as an outsider. The clear promise she showed and the internal collapse of her standing in the art scene. There's this idea that the Hackney Spaces show is the chance to pull it all back on track. The book isn't heavy on plot. It commits one of the novelistic cardinal sins of spending much of the time dwelling in the past. Yet, it is an example of the ways that incredibly powerful when done well.
Boy Parts is an unreliable narrator novel executed in a truly nuanced and interesting way. Usually, when a writer employs the technique, they wink so often at the reader that their eye is just constantly twitching. It's uncomfortable. Self conscious and heavy handed. Clark does it all through subtlety and by borrowing techniques from mystery writers. She plants details early in the novel. Irina tells us or someone else in the story about how something went down. Gradually, through other conversations or slips of self admission, we realize these stories aren't true. That a small detail is different. We're not told not to trust her version of events—we experience it for ourselves through the patience and restraint of the author. The build is incredible. Every slip adds to the tension. We're watching the disintegration of a friendship, the execution of an art practice, a crumbling identity, and increasingly, a break with reality, unfold in tandem. Irina is very happy to tell us who she is. It is her relationships with the people who come into her life that then offer challenges to this curated image. These feel like twists, like clues, like gems to keep in your pocket on this journey.
The book is intense but not in a nightmares kind of way. It's not explicitly gory for most of it—and not gratuitous when it is—and every dark thing (sorry, trying to talk around spoilers) is tightly grounded to Irina's extremely specific set of circumstances. Clark delves deeply into the ways that Irina's been hurt and how it impacts the way that she hurts others. That she can be both victim and perpetrator. And this isn't a message solely delivered to the reader. It is something Irina grapples with as well, letting the thoughts sink in deeper at some times than others. There's a real power to this, a consideration that allows Clark to keep us aligned with Irina even as she says and does horrible things. Clark affords us the chance to understand where Irina is coming from. She makes her fully human even if she is a bad friend, if she takes advantage of people. She does bad things, but she also has plenty of bad done to her. You get the sense that Irina is extremely overconfident but is also far in over her own head.
Clark has a lot to say on what forms a person, what makes them who they become as an adult and how those forces are still at play in adult life. This is a book that's, at its core, is about being a person and an artist. About the hunt for recognition and the collateral damage.
The narrative moves fast. The chapters are chronological but also named for and loosely arranged around the model that most heavily figures into the period. We see the relationships and experiences attached to each as Irina works through her archive. The chapters are well paced, drip feeding information through vivid scenes, and they also incorporate a lot of emails, text messages, and Irina's best friend's Tumblr posts on her supposedly secret blog that Irina religiously reads. This allows Clark to get in outsider perspectives despite the thick first person narration and also speeds along the pacing of the overall novel. It adds an interesting dynamic watching how her communication style changes across platforms and seeing her react internally to the information she gleans from these sources and then often acts in direct contradiction to her feelings.
It's hard to talk about the books that light your head on fire. All the words feel so feeble. But there's something about Boy Parts that glows. I think I found it at the perfect time. I think I was craving a gritty rawness, an intensely committed story. I needed that exploration of anger. That cathartic idea of getting revenge, no matter how thin and morally dubious the final result is. Clark writes an arresting novel that's withstood the hype machine and the test of time for a reason. This is one of those books that broke my brain and will be with me for a long time, and that's maybe the best thing I can say about a book but is unfortunately not a promise that it will do the same for you. I can assure you this is an extremely sound book technically, especially for a debut novel, beyond whatever it lit up inside me specifically. It's not to be read with a weak stomach, but also, don't let its reputation scare you off.
Overall: 5
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