Book Review: "Penance" by Eliza Clark

I have not yet read any Eliza Clark though I have been meaning to. 'Penance' is therefore my first novel by her and what a novel it was. I feel kind of personally attacked by this. The representation of 2000s internet culture was unlawfully accurate and the ideas swirling around the kinds of conversations that went on unrestricted was very well written. The author completes this image of the culture with an unhealthy but prevalent obsession with true crime by a community who are only half-informed about the case, but fully informed about the grisly details of a murder. Podcasts, internet rabbit holes, back and forth communication on conspiracy theories and so much more litters this book, making it feel all too real to us millennials especially.

This book is about the case around the horrific murder of Joan Wilson. Ten years' on and her murder is still being talked about on Reddit, Tumblr and on podcasts that are more than insensitive towards the case. It inspires conversation yes, but a lot of it is by these people who the author has written in well as being chronically online. Conspiracy theories run rampant in the communities. As we get fed the narrative of the years leading up to the murder we learn a number of other shocking details which include a man who committed sexual crimes against children, a child who drowned and died, a man who committed sexual assault and then killed himself when he was found out and finally, we learn of three girls from different background who only came together to set another girl on fire. This is not a book for the light-hearted.

Joni probably was not the best of girls but neither was anyone else. Angelica was a bully to Joni and then Joni became the bully to Angelica. Dolly was represented as this scapegoat psycho who got everything blamed on her. Her voice scathingly cut out of the narrative so that this image of her could remain, keeping the reader wondering about what the truth of the matter really was. Then we had Violet who ultimately disappeared into the night with a conscience she could not control. There are several other characters who piece together this narrative but the four main girls are probably the ones the reader wants to focus on. They are all individual yes, but they all share one thing in common: they are essentially flawed teenagers, just like every other teenager. They have been through pretty horrific things. Finally, they are all in want of becoming someone rather than being stuck where they are.

One great advantage of this book was the narrative structure. Each section started off with something to do with social media reporting on the case. For example: the very first page of the book is a podcast conversation between two people who are talking about how much they hate Angelica even though they have never actually met her. This is to show us the faults of amateur true crime podcasts and how they can be completely insensitive to the case at hand and how they can also inspire mob hate with little information. Straight after these comments, the reader is taken back to Angelica's troubled childhood in which she witnesses her best friend die and her father is a man of a questionable character, we also see how she does not deal with her emotions well as there is nobody there to help her. Yes, she might have bullied Joni, but she too was flawed.

Joni is another character who is flawed and thus, when we hear about her we start drawing parallel lines between her and other characters. When Joni and Violet were once friends, we saw them have a great time together but then, they grew apart. Joni became friends with other people and Violet was left to deal with some horrifying stuff all by herself. Joni began to change and of course, teenagers all change but is that a reason to get involved with the plan to murder the other? Of course not. There are never any winners in this book - only losers. Each and every character has lost in some way and these four girls have lost more than anyone else.

This book was fantastic and if you want to read one book this year that will challenge your perception of a case and everything you thought you knew about true crime investigation then I think that this book is for you. It really gets the reader to think about every single facet that lead up to this horrifying event and when you get to the end, you may still have some questions for the people who populated this novel.