Family Book Club #1: Penance by Eliza Clark

Warning: This post contains mild spoilers. 

During August, I read Penance by Eliza Clark. So did my mum and dad. Yep, we’ve started a book club! Penance was my selection. Given the truckload of online-culture references, I wasn’t sure how they’d get on with it. After all, I’m the one that had access to Tumblr during my formative years. They both enjoyed it, mum awarding it 4 stars, dad awarding it 5, which was a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, I still had to explain a ‘Homestuck’ reference quite soon in the discussion. 

‘Penance’ tells the story of three girls who murder their classmate. But, for extra intrigue, it is presented as a controversial and untrustworthy book-within-a-book. 

Online culture, as I’ve suggested, occupied most of the discussion. There are two reasons that it was relevant to the narrative: the teenage protagonists and the true crime industry they have fallen into.  My mum made the interesting point that she viewed the book as ‘a portrait’ that is great now but could age poorly. I agreed with this because, though all ideas are transferable, this book can get quite specific. I raised that I felt that the author may be too close to the young protagonists. She did a pretty good job portraying a wide world and creating nuances with the older characters, but I was wary that her young age was showing, and she may have spent as much time online as her characters. Although the parents were interviewed personally, my mum found that they were still seen through the lens of their children. 

Having survived Covid-19’s lockdown, we are all familiar with the image of someone who is ‘chronically online’, especially because we’ve seen it demonstrated by young people who weren’t even going to school. The internet seems to have made people almost single-minded, obsessing over their own narratives and drama. Penance portrays many people in this way. 

We agreed that something the author did well was show how people constantly create narratives in their minds. This happens with many characters, but it is cleverly used when Carelli, the unreliable narrator covering the crime, and Dolly, one of the perpetrators, seem to mirror each other. Dolly decided what ‘Matty’, a school shooter, was like as a person based on his diaries, cutting out pieces that didn’t suit her narrative. Carelli, writing her story as a book-within-this-book, decided what she was like as a person based on her therapeutic writing, implying that he had cut out pieces that didn’t fit his narrative. This serves as a criticism of both authors and fans of true-crime stories, as well as an interesting observation about humans. 

Continuing the discussion about mental narratives, my dad pointed out that the book shows how people often ‘make hideous people extra hideous’. The book shows right-wing politicians and bullies being as evil as they are, yet suggests that not everything written about them is true. ‘Cancel culture’ is a big thing online, but people have always loved to make dramatic declarations about people, from witch hunts to mere rumours. If people are guilty of anything it still seems to be a free-for-all; we can do anything to this person because they’re bad, and we’re good! But, specific to the narrator of this book, a right-wing politician must be a bad father and an aggressive interviewee… right? 

When discussing the characters, we agreed Clark’s teenagers were very well created. My dad opened by saying that he appreciated that each of the girls was interesting and distinct, which is not something he often finds within the genre. We agreed on this. My mum then raised that Jayde, an older character, was accurately portrayed as older; she had a hobby outside of herself (being into sports instead of online, as well as a vibrant family life), and didn’t let the internet wrap her up in her own head. This was agreed on, though I felt that Jayde made some decisions that seemed too poor for someone like her. 

We discussed the unreliable narrator in detail. We agreed that he was extremely selfish, so much so that he failed to see other points of view. While other book clubs and reviewers discussed theories that his hidden layers went deeper, we concluded that he wasn’t guilty of many additional crimes. It boils down to him not being willing to accept things that didn’t fit his narrative. My dad said that, during the book, he suspected that the narrator was even less reliable than he turned out to be, expecting a twist that never came. 

We also had a conversation about politics that, as most do, went on for longer than we’d intended. Being in the backdrop, Brexit manages to still eclipse a lot of the characters’ lives. It is the reason that the crime got less attention than it would have (it happened that night), and the father of one of the protagonists was so heavily involved with it that it affected her life too. There isn’t much to say about this, but I do want to say that it is interesting we write about Brexit and Covid now, while most books I read discuss 9/11 or wars that I wasn’t alive/old enough to see. 

The final thing we touched upon was that there was a big build-up to the crime, yet there is no discernible motive or much of a build-up. The kill seemed like an impulse. We were all unsure on whether we liked it or how much sense it made, but I think it was sufficiently believable. 

Something that interested me was that, following this conversation, my dad lowered his rating from five to four stars. I hope my mum and I weren’t too negative, because we still find the book impressive and enjoyable.