Penance - by Eliza Clark (Hardcover)

About the Book

On a beach in a run-down seaside town on the Yorkshire coastline, sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson is set on fire by three other schoolgirls. Nearly a decade after the murder, journalist Alec Z. Carelli writes the definitive account of the crime, drawn from hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves. The result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil. But how much of the story is true? -- adapted from jacket

Book Synopsis

One of Granta's Best Young British Novelists 2023

"Eliza Clark's writing embraces the socially unacceptable and wryly explores themes of gender, power, and violence."--Granta's Best of Young British Novelists 2023

"Chilling, clever, and unputdownable."--Guardian

From the author of the cult hit Boy Parts comes a chilling psychological thriller, a brilliantly told story of murder among a group of teenage girls--a powerful and disturbing novel as piercing in its portrait of young women as Emma Cline's The Girls.

On a beach in a run-down seaside town on the Yorkshire coastline, sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson is set on fire by three other schoolgirls.

Nearly a decade after the horrifying murder, journalist Alec Z. Carelli has written the definitive account of the crime, drawn from hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves. The result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.

But how much of the story is true?

Compulsively readable, provocative, and disturbing, Penance is a cleverly nuanced, unflinching exploration of gender, class, and power that raises troubling questions about the media and our obsession with true crime while bringing to light the depraved side of human nature and our darkest proclivities.

Review Quotes

"Deeply disturbing and hilarious." - Imogen Crimp, author of A Very Nice Girl

"Scabrous, cruelly funny and frequently stomach-churning. . . . Shot through with a satisfying jolt of Northern Gothic, the whole unevenly relayed through the contrivedly dispassionate medium of a reporter's words. . . . Reading it gives the impression that anyone who endures adolescence will be lucky to escape alive." - Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Think Ruth Rendell's psychological intensity meets Murderpedia.org. Clark's skilled foreshadowing, characterization, and atmospheric conjuring make her one to watch." - Booklist

"Penance is a darkly compelling study of violence, madness and manipulation. It is grimly topical in light of the frequent mass killings in America and the steady scourge of knife crime among youngsters in Britain. Ms Clark, who this year was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, impresses with her effective conceit and her slippery narrator. The patchwork narrative is skillfully woven together . . . . she captivates with her sharp depictions of three young women who create their own 'tiny hell.'" - The Economist

"With the precision of Yellowjackets, Clark marks the vicious intensity pulsing beneath adolescent female friendships and presses it to its most savage conclusions--except these girls have social media accounts and British accents. This novel is certainly not for the faint of heart, but the violence at its core is cut slightly by the fascinating questions about the ethics of true crime at its periphery (not to mention Clark's hilariously pitch-perfect impersonation of teenaged girls and Tumblr subcultures)." - Oprah Daily

"Bright young novelist Eliza Clark writes dark . . . . Clever." - Washington Post

"Eliza Clark's propulsive novel dives into the depraved obsession with true crime, class, and power in a distressing look at young women and the darkness of the human spirit." - Nylon Magazine

"Penance is a bold experiment in both content and form, as well as a biting satire of the modern true crime industry." - The Harvard Crimson

"Chilling, clever and unputdownable." - The Guardian (UK)

"Never reads like a conventional novel. . . . Penance is written with such intelligence and dark humour . . . what Clark does best, though, is capture what it's like being a teenager today." - The Telegraph

"Intricate . . . the skin-prickling result is a pitch-dark mosaic of murky families and deadly frenemies, chronicling the slow decline of an ill-omened holiday resort with supernatural chills and metafictional twists." - The Observer (UK)

"Eliza Clark's thoughtful follow-up to her debut novel Boy Parts gives readers the opportunity to examine true crime from unexpected angles." - Chicago Review of Books

"A clever, intricate and metatextual novel . . . the effect is disconcerting, which, you come to feel, is exactly what Clark wants." - Irish Times

"Clark's second book is another firecracker . . . . Compelling." - Crack Magazine

"Penance is in one of literature's most crucial categories, 'undeniable banger.'" - Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation

"Her writing embraces the socially unacceptable, and wryly explores themes of gender, power and violence." - Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023

"An ambitious deconstruction of society's voyeuristic obsession with the true crime genre, written as a pseudo piece of investigative nonfiction, Penance is . . . a lot. But it's a big, big swing." - Paste Magazine

"I'd always assumed that true crime was primarily an American pastime, but Penance, the sophomore novel from Britain's Eliza Clark, demonstrates that our obsession has crossed the pond. . . Penance is packaged as a true crime potboiler, written by disgraced tabloid journalist Alec Carelli. . . . .which Clark does convincingly . . . .Her talent is still abundant here . . . particularly in Clark's trenchant observations . . .and in the novel's imaginative coda." - Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Clark shrewdly turns her own lens onto us, onto our obsession with true crime and our complicity in the industry it has spawned. . . . She is disturbingly gifted at inventing unrealities that feel uncannily believable." - New York Times Book Review

"Eliza Clark is a genius with voice and a master of flipped expectations. Penance astonished me with its breadth, wit and confidence. A wickedly clever deep dive into the nastier corners of the national psyche--you've never read anything like this." - Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea

"As bleak as it is compelling, Penance is a perfect dark satire of the voyeuristic true crime industry and the media's complicity in sensationalising the pointless destruction of human lives into a vulgar, grubby money-making circus." - Charlotte Vassell, author of The Other Half

"A work of show-stopping formal mastery and penetrating intelligence." - The Guardian

"Clark weaves a gripping tale that leads readers through podcast transcripts, text messages, interviews and Tumblr posts to show how stories become truth and explore the fraught space of teenage friendships and fandom as they collide with true crime." - Dazed

"Clark's prose is brisk and clever, and the horror of the events described implicitly but deliberately raises a difficult question: to what extent are we as readers merely fresh initiates in a club of corpse-ogling fanatics?" - Literary Review

"Gripping . . . . A seaside Happy Valley." - Sheena Patel, author of I'm A Fan