Boy Parts

Irina is in a rut. 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. When she's offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery which promises to revive her career in the art world, it should feel like an escape. But the news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, drawing in her obsessive best friend and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention . . .

BOY PARTS is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboos of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.

Review

Hallucinogenic, electric and sharp, Boy Parts is a whirlwind exploration of gender, class and power. -- Jessica Andrews

Boy Parts is a carnival funhouse ride: terrifying, feverish, hilarious. Clark has created a wholly original monster and a sickeningly compulsive novel. I absolutely inhaled this book. -- Julia Armfield

An impressive, fiercely current debut... delightful and addictive. ― i

Hilariously sardonic . . . Will make most readers howl with laughter and/or shut their eyes in horror. ― Guardian

As hilarious as it is grotesque. ― Another North

Explores the darkest corners of artistic practice, sexuality and violence with bold wit and fearlessness. A dazzling, horrifying debut. ― Irish Times

A funny and intensely readable spiral staircase down into the mind of a woman who wears a waist trainer under her clothes and who may or may not be a keen purveyor of ultra-violence. ― VICE

The main protagonist will prove to be one of the most alluring, infuriating, and complex characters in modern British literature. -- Niall Griffiths

Smart, stylish and very funny, Boy Parts is a gripping and unflinching exploration of female desire, narcissism, sexuality and rage. You won't want to put it down. -- Lara Williams

Boundaries are for breaking and if anyone can crash through and reinterpret the fear of our time, Eliza Clark can. ― Mslexia

It's delightfully and deviously rooted in the now with its delectable internet and culture references and evocative and real-feeling portrait of women. ― Dazed

It is a work of consummate professionalism, excellent plotting and pacing, with utterly believable dialogue. Her characters can be monstrous, but their lives could quite easily be our lives. The book is a corrective. ― Manchester Review of Books

The most deliciously grim book I've read for a while. ― Severine

An assured and complex debut that tempts and teases you always a little deeper, your eyes unable to be drawn away. ― Lunate Fiction

Even at its most transgressive, it all feels effortless. Dark, funny, bold, it's an exceptional debut. ― The Skinny

About the Author

Eliza Clark is the author of Boy Parts (2020) and Penance (2023). In 2020, Boy Parts was Blackwell's Fiction book of the year, and in 2022 Eliza was chosen as a finalist for the Women's Prize Futures Award for writers under thirty-five. In 2023, she was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She also writes for film and television. A stage adaptation of Boy Parts will premiere at Soho Theatre in October 2023.