When Eliza Clark’s debut novel came out with an indie publisher in 2020, nobody imagined that her second would be among the most eagerly awaited of 2023. Her rise from obscurity to literary celebrity began when fans on TikTok made Boy Parts a cult hit. It was complete when, a few months ago, Granta magazine named the 29-year-old author one of the UK’s best 20 novelists under the age of 40.
The story of Irina, a photographer who recruits men to pose for sexually humiliating images, Boy Parts lobbed an unpinned grenade of tactless comedy at subjects most authors would treat carefully, if at all. Irina is a genuinely troubling narrator: an abuse victim who is also dishonest, manipulative and an abuser herself, she occasionally resembles a misogynistic stereotype. (The scene where, in need of a car, she borrows one by gleefully blackmailing a man who recently raped her, is as discomfiting as it is hilarious.) To its many fans Boy Parts was a taboo-busting examination of gender politics and the paradoxical effects of trauma. Others shared the view of Irina’s art teacher: “You’re not making art here; you’re making porn … The world doesn’t need more nasty, voyeuristic photography, does it?”
