Penance by Eliza Clark

I saw a Goodreads review that described this book as “the final boss of unreliable narrators.”¹ I wish I was witty enough to write that, it totally nails my experience of reading this! Not only that, but if you are someone who has ever had any fascination with True Crime it snatches that torch our your hand and shines it directly back into your own guilty face.

The novel is presented as a non-fiction book written by Alec Z. Carelli, a disgraced ex-tabloid journalist (Polaris a thinly veiled pseudonym fo the disgusting rag that was The Sun). This book, by the author’s own introduction, is something of a last ditch attempt at regaining popularity. His aim is to write “the book” on the case – and like most true crime writers – he wants us to believe that is for noble and not purely self-serving reasons.

Summary

The case is the horrific murder of a teenage girl in a faded seaside town, at the hands of her three of her female schoolmates. She’d been tortured and locked in a burning beach hut, but she’d survived those injuries long enough to get away for help and name her killers. The motives for the killing are a salacious mix of bullying, jealous, lesbian relationships, the occult and the dark disturbing world of Tumblr. We already know what happened and who did it, so the book aims at the why of the story.

Drawn from real life crimes

Penance is purely fiction but it does feel real because Eliza Clark is clearly drawing from real life crimes. The main plot draws several elements from the slender man stabbing in the US (the girls in this book even make reference to it), and the American school shooters Dotty is obsessed with are sadly ten a penny these days. Not only that, but to add to the “hell mouth” atmosphere of the fictional town, Crown-on-Sea, there was even a local hero very clearly based on Jimmy Savile, and one of the girl’s father is a self-serving right wing politic figure who will stoke up anything for attention.

There is also the past accidental death of a child on a waterslide, the background of which which reminded me of stories about Action Park (again in the USA), the young boy who died on “the world’s tallest waterslide” in Kansas City and, more inappropriately, the episode of It’s Always Sunny where Mac gets his laminated entrance bracelet stuck in a gap in the waterslide.²

Characters

Alec Z. Carelli

I often slipped in remembering, while engrossed reading about Joni, Dotty, Violet, Angelica and Jade, that it is Alec Carelli who is the “final boss.” It is very easy to forget, because we are reading his words, that he is the real main character and the girls in turn become characters in his book. What we get to know of the girls has been filtered through hindsight following the horrific crime, by the various perspectives of friends and family, by town gossip, Carelli’s own personal experience, and – crucially – his dreams for fame and fortune.

This reminded me that when reading about true crime or watching a documentary, which at the most generous could be described as an attempt to understand how and why the bad thing happened, nobody can in reality ever know the truth. We can never really know the victims or the perpetrator, never understand the truth motives or what happened between them because we were not inside their heads, and we never can be. The story will always be told by somebody else and they will always have their own biases.

Even reading between his own lines you can see that Carelli is not a man with many scruples (he was caught up in the phone hacking scandal, yet another deal life crime, even if he claims he was not directly involved). He frequently brings up the suicide of his own young adult daughter not so many years prior. He wants us, and the grieving parents, to believe this is part of his motivation and that it gives him a unique insight in some way to investigate but he does it just often enough that it feels more like a deflection and a grab for sympathy. He is a grieving parent, and yet he does not seem to be above harassing other grieving parents for the sake of his own financial and reputational gain.

With that noted, Penance by Eliza Clark is still a novel and I found it a very readable one because of how fascinating I found the girls as they are on the page.

Teenage girls

The girls themselves are people I remember from my time as a teenage girl. The intricate politics of teen girl friendships, the casual – vicious – cruelties, and the way that whether you were “in” or “out” could turn on coin flip and seemed largely based on how “pretty” you were, was painful to recall! And yes there always the Angelica, that one annoying girl who always tries too hard, that everyone actually kind of hated.

Honestly everything about the descriptions of their school lives and the shifting dynamics that resulted in the unlikely group of Dotty, Violet and Angelica, took me back. I am so glad I don’t have to relieve secondary school!

Each of the three girls ends up a outsider, and they each find solace in different fandom communities on the social media site Tumblr. Angelica has her love of musical theatre, Violet in more general true crime, and Dotty a disturbing obsession with a pair of American school shooters.

Tumblr culture

I remember Tumblr, though I would have been much older than the girls. Apparently it was founded in 2007 which makes sense as I would have needed a laptop to access it and I wouldn’t have had that until I was at university. I wasn’t a heavy user but I dipped into the shallower end of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age fandom. I’d have been around 20-21 years old.

I definitely never ventured into the true crime hashtags, and thankfully my middle-teen true crime interest (which actually was mainly mafia based, after I read my Granddad’s copy of Donnie Brasco!) didn’t resurface until I was mid-twenties when podcasts came into my life. And even if I had I don’t think that sort of intense online community would ever have been for me. I have always found fan fiction cringe.³ Fan fiction written about real life people is just another level, a bridge too far for me to contemplate.

This tangent is all to say, while I was never a participant in this specific bit of internet culture I definitely recognise it. It feels so authentic that I can only assume that Eliza Clark must have been a “Tumblr girlie” at some stage.

True crime

The book opens with an excerpt of transcript from a popular fictional true crime podcast I Peed On Your Grave where obnoxious American men make offensive and unfunny jokes and sexist remarks about the girls involved in the crime. The podcast immediately reminded me of The Last Podcast on the Left (also named after a cult horror movie), which I once attempted to listen to and found the hosts so repulsive and misogynistic that I couldn’t get through an episode. I remain horrified that it gets recommended so often, especially by women.

I am guilty of listening to other “murder of the week” podcasts. My Favourite Murder was in my rotation for a few years, and I even went to see them live in Manchester (during a “I need to get out and do more” phase!). The two female hosts were irreverent, with a light touch on the research, but didn’t make any period or rape jokes (the vibe was more pop slogan feminism, “Stay sexy and don’t get murdered”). I also enjoyed Casefile which was more serious and well researched, and my preferred accent of Australian host.

And, of course I’ve also watched most of the True Crime documentaries out there, particularly any focused on serial killers.

While the podcasters can be accused of varying degrees of insensitivity to victims and their families, and of cashing in on the intense tragedy of others, they’re opportunists regurgitating information found in reporting and documentaries made by professional journalists. That’s definitely gross and exploitative but in a more obvious way, they’re the bottom feeders in the True Crime industry.

Reading Penance made me think more about the polished documentaries made by production companies. The ones with a whole team of professionals whose foremost aim is to create an entertaining piece of media. And they’re doing that by selecting material from real life ordinary people and raking over the worst thing that ever happened to them over and over again. Twisting it in whatever way is needed to tell the best story (I also just read Bright Young Things.. so more on that to come!).

Alec Z. Carelli wants to write a smash hit book, he told us that in his introduction, and we shouldn’t forget to examine his own motives when he attempts to uncover those of Dotty, Violet and Angelica.

Eliza Clark

Alec Z. Carelli is an anagram of Eliza Clark. In writing this book I think she’s questioning her own complicity in True Crime. As I noted earlier almost everything in this book has clear inspiration from real life headline making crimes, and would not exist with those things having happened to ordinary people. The families of people affected by any of those could read this book and feel their tragedy is just being further exploited.

I loved the final “pull the rug out” move at the end. It’s not often I finish a book with an audible “well, fuck me.” And it’s been on my mind ever since!

I finished it in just a few days of compulsive reading, and felt personally interrogated over my own consumption of True Crime. It also had me recalling the churn of being a teenage girl in a surprisingly visceral way. It was an uncomfortable and lingering read, that I could not put down. Highly recommended if you enjoy challenging unreliable narrators.

1. Review by user emma: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5394304266. Looks like she had a blog but hasn’t updated it since 2022. ↩︎
2. The Gang Goes to a Water Park. season 12 episode 2 (one of my favourites!). ↩︎
3. I don’t completely understand why I have this reaction, but it’s similar to when someone performs a song right to my face. It feels intensely personal and vurnerable in a way that makes me feel super uncomfortable for some reason. I really need to get back to my notes from Daring Greatly because that did touch in this I think and I’d like to explore it more.
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