Boy Parts

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the opinions and impressions i will express in this review are entirely subjective and i am not in fact stating ‘irrefutable facts’. I am not saying that I want every story to include r*pe or SA to be serious and to exclusively revolve around this.

Boy Parts follows the exploits of Irina Sturges, an acerbic Geordie fetish photographer who specialises in shooting 'interesting'-looking men. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. She had a similar experience when she finished school and went to Chelsea College of Arts: “I went from being in Newcastle, and being fairly privileged compared to lots of people, to going down to London and being like – ah no, I’m actually rough as arsehole. Shocked to hear it comes in pints, and wondering if my simple Hobbit songs are good enough for these grand halls and their talking toilets.

And don’t get me started on how large chunks of the narrative make her abuse of men seem so f*cking transgressive and hardcore when it was anything but. This is all to say that Irina being a stronza who engages in ‘bad’ behaviour, is not why I didn’t like this book. but actually says sh*t like this to the mixed-race boy she is toying around with (‘It’s fine for you being out in this heat; you tan. But then we are meant to believe that she was in fact traumatized by this so much so that now she herself is subjecting others to the type of trauma she was victim to. 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.

if you are incensed by reviewers expressing an opinion that differs from your own one, you are better off skipping this review (this includes you too eliza…). Eliza Clark explores gender issues and power dynamics, sexuality, consent, gentrification and quite a lot more.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 . Irina represents a lot of power abuse, such as how being photographed by her is framed as an honor to these men. this is definitely the feeling you’re left with once you reach the rather hallucinogenic end of this book, but the wild ride to get there is pretty fun. the writing is not flowery or complicated in any way, but the way clark manages to weave in implied social commentary on gender roles and the male gaze is insane. No matter how good she may be,” adds Greer, “she just can’t outrun other people’s perceptions of her.

There was something profoundly simplistic about the way these themes are explored and the narrator is one of the dullest galls I have ever had the misfortune to read about. People always conflate beauty with goodness … I can just cry a bit, talk like I’m daft, tease my hair up like a televangelist,” she scoffs.Her internal monologue is repetitive, but not even in a realistic navel-gazey way, like Selin’s narration is in The Idiot, but in an incredibly affected way that just comes across as the book desperately trying to present this character as some counter-culture edgelady, who repeatedly ‘transgresses’ accepted norms of behaviours and—shock horror—flips the ‘male gaze’ on its head by being the one behind the camera. 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. The whole absolute power corrupts absolutely maxim may come to mind, though Clark is also careful to show how just because this story is about abuse doesn’t mean that all kink or dom/sub relationships are inherently abusive and harmful.