3.5 stars the story was good, a little wild I liked it but don't think it would be one I would read again. ( )

3.5 stars the story was good, a little wild I liked it but don't think it would be one I would read again. ( )

I came to this book knowing very little about it bar a couple of snippets people had shared and I am immensely glad for that experience. If you like very dark comedies with twists and turns that leave you wondering what is going on, stop reading this review and go and pick up a copy.

Did you ever have that one friend when you were in your twenties who seemed to have it all. Talented, beautiful, single-minded, and did not give a shit what anyone else thought of her?

Boy Parts tells the story of Irina, a photographer who takes explicit fetish photographs of the men she scouts on the streets of Newcastle. She picks normal looking men, men who others wouldn’t find attractive enough to photograph. She uses her body and sexuality to get what she wants and manipulates the people around her (her best friend included) into giving it to her along with the power over them that she craves.

In the opening pages we meet her hungover and struggling through a day at her part-time bar job when she is assaulted by the mother of one of the men she has photographed (who turns out not to be as old as he said)... things don’t get better from there.

Clarke weaves a very careful spell with Irina. She is harsh, difficult to be around and self centered. I instantly liked her but as the story unfolded it became difficult to trust what Irina is telling us. Brutal attacks and memories are presented in the hazy half light of drugs, alcohol and a lack of evidence to the point that we cannot tell what is real or what is imagined. In preparing for an upcoming exhibition Irina goes back through her archive and in doing so gives us a timeline - of sorts - to her spiraling memories and mental health. We begin to question everything.

A very dark, difficult and gory read at time so beware if that is not your thing but a remarkable debut novel from a voice to watch in the future. ( )

How do I get off of the gender-swapped-American-Psycho side of BookTok? ( )

The critical scuttlebutt surrounding the 2020 publication of Eliza Clark's debut novel, "Boy Parts," included frequent references to Brett Easton Ellis' "American Psycho." Having struggled through both novels, I would say that the comparison is well-taken, although not perfectly precise. The overwrought clichés trotted out for Ellis' book ("transgressive!" "shocking!" "deliciously depraved!") have also been applied to "Boy Parts:" sometimes, the professional critics sing in wearisome harmony.

There is some basis for the critics' rapture, however: the two books do have a number of things in common. A genuinely sociopathic protagonist? Check. A contrived, wearisome catalog of brand names and popular musicians, used as an easy way of establishing place and time? Check. (Ellis' novel was universally acknowledged to be a dark indictment of America in the 1980s; Ms. Clark's is supposed to portray contemporary London and Newcastle.) Secondary characters who are decent and (pardon the expression) normal, and are horribly misused by the protagonist? Check: to wit, Patrick Bateman's secretary, or the cashier at Tesco in "Boy Parts." (This young man is arguably the most appealing and sympathetic character in either novel.) A preoccupation with sexual psychopathy? Check, although, to her credit, Ms. Clark's novel is nowhere near as detailed or obnoxious as Mr. Ellis.'

To say more, to outline the plot, would be a waste of time. The book is riddled with "woke" jargon (including the word "woke," used without irony), whereas Ellis' book dealt with a strata of society unconcerned with such things. The major plot difference is the protagonist: instead of Patrick Bateman's Wall Street elitist, "Boy Parts" offers us Irina, a twentysomething "feminist" artist whose exploitative photographs of sad, often tortured men are enjoying a wave of popularity among aficionados of "fetish porn." (Think Robert Mapplethorpe, one of Irina's idols.) She is a false friend, an impossible lover, and a public nuisance.

But, in her single deviation from the Bateman character's persona, she is not a "serial killer." Staging, and recording, acts of sexual humiliation and agony are her preoccupations, not murder per se. But the dissimilarity ends there. She shares one other quality with Patrick Bateman: she's just plain boring. Once the shock value is removed from their characterizations, there's nothing left. A sideshow geek from the cheapest of carnivals would undoubtedly have more substance.

Eliza Clark is being hailed as the next big thing, or one of the next big things, in contemporary fiction. Perhaps she will be: she is not without talent, and her "woke" weltanschauung is certainly the hallmark of postmodernist fiction. I'm sure she could do far better than "Boy Parts" (which is damning with faint praise), and I sincerely hope she tries.

Not recommended. ( )