Hey everyone! I hope you are all doing well! Fall is just around the corner and I am excited for the spooky season. In the meantime, I’m going to continue to read “weird girl literature.” I’m planning on reading another Ottessa Moshfegh book in the future, but she does not completely own the “weird girl literature” category. Well, this book, in particular, is more dark than weird but we’ll get into that. Let’s talk about Boy Parts.

Content Warning: Explicit Sexual Content, Abuse and Violence. Sexual Assault, Harsh Language, Substance Abuse, Graphic Depictions of Injuries

Irina Sturges has an appetite that can’t be satiated. Drugs, alcohol, and sex no longer satisfy her. Ever since she was blacklisted from the art scene, she has been itching to find her way back in. Irina decides to do something a little more provocative to get people’s attention. She begins scouting young men off the streets of Newcastle and takes sexually explicit photos of them. Irina’s new photographs revive her career but send her into a spiral of paranoia. The past is catching up and Irina may not be able to outrun it.

Imagine if American Psycho was actually interesting and you get Boy Parts. Eliza Clark takes the reader by the hand and drags them headfirst into the point of view of an unreliable and dangerous narrator. Both darkly funny and wildly uncomfortable, Boy Parts pushes the boundaries while exploring sexuality, art, and feminism. While the book does deal with uncomfortable subject matter, it does so in a way that invites the readers to critique the motives of the main character, Irina, as well as the others. I heard someone say recently that art isn’t meant to give answers, but only present questions and I think that applies the best to this novel in every sense. Now, this book obviously deals with intensely uncomfortable subjects and does get a bit graphic so this won’t be to everyone’s tastes. If you read the content warnings and thought otherwise, then I understand. If you are like me and have a rather insatiable sense of morbid curiosity, then Boy Parts might very well be the next book you add to your “weird girl literature” summer.