Boy Parts

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but functionally, american psycho is a book that was marketed as being transgressive, and i don't think that it is, bc i think people conflate genuine acts of subversion/transgression with good ol' shock value and imo nothing's really being ~transgressed when a wealthy white man exploits and abuses his power over others in the way that patrick bateman does - and i'm talking about this bc imo this is why boy parts is so successful. Our main girl, Irina, is this manipulative psychopath of a woman who takes erotic and explicit photographs (fetish art) of young men for a living. the walls are lined with bookshelves that seem to exclusively contain manga, graphic novels and comic books.

but I think that's maybe just because if you tend towards them, you tend to keep a place in your heart for all of them. Yet, we also get so many instances that go against what this kind of characterization is trying to establish. Boy Parts is a distressing novel, but one that probes really important questions about power, sexuality and violence, and does so in a way that will have you laughing as much as you are cringing.

And I can forgive a lack of intersectionality and dimension if say this, like Plath's Bell Jar, had been published in the 1960s. Effortlessly swaying from darkly disturbing to riotously funny, Eliza Clark’s clever and fearless novel about a photographer hunting for average-looking men for explicit shots is a perceptive window into sexual taboos and gender roles in the twenty-first century. Whether I’m in control or losing it, I’ve always had a power thing,’ Irina admits, and this is central to her art. Eliza Clark’s 2020 debut novel Boy Parts, a brutal artworld satire-cum-thriller, is a publishing phenomenon. The book this felt closest to for me, however, is the ideas in Roberto Bolaño’s Distant Star and how art can have moral boundaries that, when crossed, becomes evil.

please do not confuse my negative review of this book as a personal attack on the author or as an estimation of the author herself as i do not know her in any capacity whatsoever. Still at a relatively early stage in the creative process, the four women – Greer, Joyce, Kelly and Clark – are figuring things out. she manipulates everyone around her and is just downright cruel most of the time, but she’s also very witty and you’re further drawn into the story just to find out what she’s going to say next.

Irina represents a lot of power abuse, such as how being photographed by her is framed as an honor to these men. She’s naive, pathetic, obnoxious, solipsistic, cruel, and superficial…but I found her acts of self-dramatization to be both fascinating and a source of great amusement. Part of me does think that London is this complete capitalist cesspit where all of the money goes and where dreams go to die,” she says, deadpan. Anyhow, the man who Irina abuses most happens to be a lot younger than her and, unlike her, despite the story's initial attempts at painting her as a struggling artist, her name is known in artsy circles and she can afford her living expense and the type of materials required to print out her edgy photos, he works at Tesco. you were always on the edge of your seat wanting to know what she'd do next, but then randomly she would have these moments where she was relatable or at least more understandable, which made the book hard to put down.

Why bother with all that gaslighting of your acquaintances if you then don’t give a sh*t about being exposed. the opinions and impressions i will express in this review are entirely subjective and i am not in fact stating ‘irrefutable facts’. Being a tall and sexy white Northern who thinks she’s the f*cking hardcore because she likes to take kinky photos of men she deems ‘beta’. her 'THIS IS A GAYS ONLY EVENT, GO HOME' playlist finishes, then loops, and takes us back in with 'cool for the summer,' which i just hate.My only caveat is that I have to find said unlikable characters interesting: Emma Bovary, for instance, is not a particularly clever character, you could say she is quite the opposite. Not as tense or edgy as it thinks it is, this takes an inordinately long time to become interesting, but only then in a sub-American Psycho homage. I think some people use unreliable narrators as a narrative Get Out of Jail Free card, which-- no, don't do that. Explores the darkest corners of artistic practice, sexuality and violence with bold wit and fearlessness.