Penance
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- £14.99
Publisher Description
A GRANTA BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST 2023
'One of the summer's most talked-about books.' SUNDAY TIMES
'An unmissable banger that you need to preorder immediately.' ALICE SLATER
'You've never read anything like this.' JULIA ARMFIELD
Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes?
Did you see the pictures of the body?
Did you look for them?
It's been years since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time.
That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec. Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the 'definitive account' of the murder - and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.
The only question is: how much of it is true?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Eliza Clark’s latest novel is a crime book within a crime book, unfolding in the voice of Alec Z. Carelli, a disgraced journalist turned true crime author who has picked up on the renewed interest in an obscure murder case in the hopes of reviving his fortunes after a series of flops. Carelli’s book, in turn, unfolds in the voice of many of the key players involved in the case, including excerpts from the podcasts that boosted the popularity of the crime, local community figures, family members and the perpetrators themselves. Clark takes a familiar, but nonetheless shocking, narrative of petty adolescent conflict escalating into irreversible horror and throws in elements of class, local politics, childhood trauma, supernatural beliefs, social media and the macabre allure of true crime fandom to build up a picture of how a teenage girl came to be murdered by three of her classmates. The ending reveals a twist that points an accusatory finger at the true crime industry and all complicit in its questionable ethics. Thankfully, Penance is merely fiction.
