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A review by porgyreads
Penance by Eliza Clark
5.0
Eliza Clark you have the mind of a mastermind!
Penance is a clever interrogation of the ethics of true crime, harnessing the tantalising nature of murderous, an unreliable narrator, and precise decisions regarding form.
These characters are my age and it was all too real to see points at which my experience overlapped with each of the girls, including Girl D who was the epitome of my worst nightmare: wrong place wrong person wrong time.
Eliza Clark perfectly renders the world of the internet, the interior worlds and social world of teenage girls, and the industry that profits when a pocket of hell opens.
The boldest and best choice I think Clark makes does not rest in her choice of form (still great and meta) or the depiction of crow-on-sea (that I had to google just to make sure it wasn’t real because it felt so real) but the choice to give us such minimal information regarding the psyche of Dolly - from Dolly herself - who is arguably the most intriguing.
Her actions are never excused but there’s a level of understanding that is created by these snippets and anecdotes of her life through the way the others see and interact with her. We never fully inhabit her psyche, the closest we come to this is through short tumblr comparative tumblr posts and her terrible fan fiction.
It does the opposite of what most true crime podcasts would do giving her the least amount of attention or attempt to get into her head because this is where the ability to harness some sort of fanbase comes about. McKnight works as a perfect foil for Dolly in this sense. The mention of how fans were sucked into this mirror world of school shooters via a clip of the shooter on trial? We never get that moment. Dolly never gets that moment in this.
Her chaos continues to be unexplained and unjustified. Her empathy is projected onto a heathen than she fictionalises to an astounding degree and we are never fully given the chance to do the same. The urge is always there to know more but Clarke doesn’t surrender, she holds remarkably firm, marking the bounds of the points she intends to make.
The theme of girlhood as hell is really interestingly explored through Dolly, Violet and Angelic. It’s never spoken but you get the sense that they are willing to invite evil into their world, invoke it, and thrust it upon the world because they’re incapable of handing the very real evil that has not been invited in their lives - it warps them slowly and then very quickly. Much like the argument of play that our fictional author Carnelli makes.
Also I will be thinking about those little polly pockets and frogs, and the sims basement for ages, dear god.
Penance is a clever interrogation of the ethics of true crime, harnessing the tantalising nature of murderous, an unreliable narrator, and precise decisions regarding form.
These characters are my age and it was all too real to see points at which my experience overlapped with each of the girls, including Girl D who was the epitome of my worst nightmare: wrong place wrong person wrong time.
Eliza Clark perfectly renders the world of the internet, the interior worlds and social world of teenage girls, and the industry that profits when a pocket of hell opens.
The boldest and best choice I think Clark makes does not rest in her choice of form (still great and meta) or the depiction of crow-on-sea (that I had to google just to make sure it wasn’t real because it felt so real) but the choice to give us such minimal information regarding the psyche of Dolly - from Dolly herself - who is arguably the most intriguing.
It does the opposite of what most true crime podcasts would do giving her the least amount of attention or attempt to get into her head because this is where the ability to harness some sort of fanbase comes about. McKnight works as a perfect foil for Dolly in this sense. The mention of how fans were sucked into this mirror world of school shooters via a clip of the shooter on trial? We never get that moment. Dolly never gets that moment in this.
Her chaos continues to be unexplained and unjustified. Her empathy is projected onto a heathen than she fictionalises to an astounding degree and we are never fully given the chance to do the same. The urge is always there to know more but Clarke doesn’t surrender, she holds remarkably firm, marking the bounds of the points she intends to make.
The theme of girlhood as hell is really interestingly explored through Dolly, Violet and Angelic. It’s never spoken but you get the sense that they are willing to invite evil into their world, invoke it, and thrust it upon the world because they’re incapable of handing the very real evil that has not been invited in their lives - it warps them slowly and then very quickly. Much like the argument of play that our fictional author Carnelli makes.
Also I will be thinking about those little polly pockets and frogs, and the sims basement for ages, dear god.