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Eliza Clark's BOY PARTS, published in the UK in 2020 and now seeing its US debut, is a disturbing romp through a cesspit of toxicity: the world of MFA in Fine Arts students.
In the Northern English industrial city of Newcastle-on-Tyne, where Clark once lived, MFA dropout Irina shares a flat with her insecure best friend, Flo and their buddy Finch, who also has artistic aspirations. There was once also a housecat, orange former stray Fitz, but BOY PARTS is no cozy. Irina is dangerous. Her unreliable first-person narration never obscures that. Satire, suspense, and horror, Irina's adventures work as all three.
As the title suggests, she collect boy parts--on film and digital. She photographs men. Not glamorous men. Ordinary men, whom she picks up on the street. She's a one-woman artistic revolution, photographing what nobody wants to see. She also nonchalantly takes lots of drugs and photographs violence. And she asks the men for permission and age-specifying identification, but sometimes things go awry. When a boy steals his brother's ID to pose for Irina and his mum clocks Irina from across the bar at her day (well, night) job, she gets six weeks off to recover from her work-related injury. Just when she thinks she'll have nothing to do in her convalescence, opportunity knocks. A swanky London gallery wants some photos by this Northern girl. It could be her long-wanted big break—and ultimate revenge. There are so many people and institutions against whom she wants revenge.
That's when Irina really starts to come unglued. She's attracted to Eddie, who works at Tesco, the open-all-night (in some places) budget corner store chain. He's also a graduate with an English major, and insists he's not as dumb as Irina thinks. Newcastle is full of people with creativity worried that they're the only one not using it, apparently.
Irina is also attracted to Flo, but doesn't know any healthy relationship strategies. She's afraid that Flo will learn a big secret about Irina and her art. For the moment, Flo is disappointed that Irina lost Fritz, the cat. If only she knew what was really going on. As Clark lets the reader in on Irina's secrets, the suspense ramps up. The reader is warmly encouraged to root for some of Clark's painfully realistic characters--not including Irina.
There are a million crime novels in which men behave like Irina. Clark asks how we read the story differently when the genders are switched and it's a great question. I also love that Finch is trans, and that the book is not about that fact. Finch has a lot of identifying characteristics, as do most of Clark's main characters.
Part Bret Easton Ellis (or, rather, Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner's version of Ellis, in their film AMERICAN PSYCHO), part send-up of the British conceptual art scene, and part love story for the post-industrial nooks and crannies of Newcastle, BOY PARTS is more than the sum of its parts. Clark is a writer to watch.
§ Rebecca Nesvet is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay and co-edits Reviewing the Evidence.
Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, May 2023
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