Penance -- Eliza Clark, Hardcover

One of Granta's Best Young British Novelists 2023

From the author of the cult hit Boy Parts comes a chilling, brilliantly told story of murder among a group of teenage girls--a powerful and disturbing novel as piercing in its portrait of young women as Emma Cline's The Girls.

On a beach in a run-down seaside town on the Yorkshire coastline, sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson is set on fire by three other schoolgirls.

Nearly a decade after the horrifying murder, journalist Alec Z. Carelli has written the definitive account of the crime, drawn from 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.

But how much of the story is true?

Compulsively readable, provocative, and disturbing, Penance is a cleverly nuanced, unflinching exploration of gender, class, and power that raises troubling questions about the media and our obsession with true crime while bringing to light the depraved side of human nature and our darkest proclivities.

Author: Eliza Clark
Publisher: Harper
Published: 09/26/2023
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.06h x 5.91w x 1.18d
ISBN: 9780063327856

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/10/2023
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2023
Booklist 08/01/2023 pg. 30