Boy Parts

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the writing is not flowery or complicated in any way, but the way clark manages to weave in implied social commentary on gender roles and the male gaze is insane. She was immediately struck by the theatrical potential of the story about an artist who takes explicit pictures of young men. Sure, the narrative shows us just how ‘pathetic’ and ‘sad’ he is about his messed up relationship with Irina but his experiences bear no real weight on Irina’s narrative.

She’s apathetic, has an inflated sense of self, experiences moments of dissociation where she observes the people around her with a mixture of superiority and detachment seems to categorize men in a way that is all the rage in the manosphere, and makes no compunction about transgressing accept norms of behaviour, engaging in sadistic behaviour, or deriving pleasure from what her society deems taboo (r*pe fantasies etc. It has sold more than 30,000 copies in the UK and gained a huge following on TikTok, with readers posting their favourite quotes. all three books have similarly strong existentialist overtones (irina: "i explain to him that nothing matters, and nothing lasts. Note* Boy Parts does include a number of mature themes and content inlcuding lots of drugs, sex, language, sexual abuse, and violence.She had a similar experience when she finished school and went to Chelsea College of Arts: “I went from being in Newcastle, and being fairly privileged compared to lots of people, to going down to London and being like – ah no, I’m actually rough as arsehole. Our narrator, Irina, obsessively takes sexually explicit photographs of men she scouts from the likes of Tesco. Clark is probing some interesting ideas of power and gender by reversing the gender roles with Irina being the intimidating role using her power to exploit her models. boy parts by eliza clark was one of the most unhinged and fucked up, yet entertaining books i've ever read! She recently wrote on Twitter: “a good thing about me is that you can enjoy my book without finding out that i went to oxbridge and my parents are both famous journalists like 6 months later and feeling somewhat betrayed.

I am not saying that I want every story to include r*pe or SA to be serious and to exclusively revolve around this. She obsessively takes explicit photographs of average-looking men she scouts from the streets of Newcastle while her dead-end bar job slips away; she's more interested in drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. Speaking of Tarantino if you thought that Uma Thurman's character in that or Kill Bill have some merit…well, you might like Boy Parts after all.

The narrative doesn’t convey Irina’s creative process in a convincing way, in fact, I was left with the impression that—and here i must briefly break from my death of the author approach and acknowledge the existence of the author—whoever was behind the story was either not particularly familiar with photography or not interested in going into detail about it (as i said this an impression i formed, not a fact). We get to read as she goes through these strange and obsessive behaviors and falls into this downward spiral into madness.

Funnily enough the story’s numerous floundering attempts at edginess, but these feel dated and painfully affected, on the lines of Awad's Bunny or Mariana Enríquez who at least do not settle for mid-tier levels of offensive but f*cking commit.Now the idea of reversing gender in this sort of power hierarchy isn’t new—I quite enjoyed Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi exploring this in Fra Keeler—but I quite liked how this touches on ideas of “woke culture” and how society will overlook abuse if they find a way to look at it as subversive. Clark brings us into the world of fetish art and kink sexualities and explores how those with power over others very often abuse it. The ‘hook’, that of a ‘pervy’ female photographer, had potential for the first 30% of the narrative. I mean, compared to We Play Ourselves, Self-Portrait with Boy, and Generation Loss (all of whom happen to focus on queer young women who are not portrayed as exclusively interested in men and in replicating tired dom/sub dynamics) Boy Parts just doesn’t go much into depth when it comes to Irina and her changing relationship to her photography.

From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. I liked the slow unraveling of her sanity and the way that she's an unreliable narrator in her own story.

Note: I use Goodreads to track my own personal enjoyment of books I read - not for critical opinions. And I am fond of the 'she’s not feeling too good' subgenre, contemporary books that are characterized by a caustic tone and explore the lives of women who are, you guessed it, not feeling too good and are depicted as alienated and self-sabotaging … I also do not have a problem with books combining dark humor with violence, My Sister the Serial Killer is a fave of mine. I didn't get much out of this novel, there wasn't enough commentary on society, sex power dynamics, and relationships to make it worthwhile my time.