If there was one critique I'd have on it, though, I'd just say that I wasn't a huge fan of the writing. she manipulates everyone around her and is just downright cruel most of the time, but she’s also very witty and you’re further drawn into the story just to find out what she’s going to say next. but functionally, american psycho is a book that was marketed as being transgressive, and i don't think that it is, bc i think people conflate genuine acts of subversion/transgression with good ol' shock value and imo nothing's really being ~transgressed when a wealthy white man exploits and abuses his power over others in the way that patrick bateman does - and i'm talking about this bc imo this is why boy parts is so successful. For an author whose entire online presence is built on wokeness (I found this book through her Guardian interview and then her twitter) there’s some problematic shit in here. the boyfriend she had when we first met was this nme-cut-out, landfill-indie looking cunt with a porkpie hat and a huge fringe.

She had a similar experience when she finished school and went to Chelsea College of Arts: “I went from being in Newcastle, and being fairly privileged compared to lots of people, to going down to London and being like – ah no, I’m actually rough as arsehole. She poses them in photographs in ways that subvert the male gaze-heavy fetish photographs that show women in peril or pain.And I can forgive a lack of intersectionality and dimension if say this, like Plath's Bell Jar, had been published in the 1960s. Key to this book are the gazes into power structures that shatters any rose colored glasses they might try to hide behind.

firstly, i saw that it's been compared to american psycho a lot and i do get it - particularly in the second half when the narrative gets increasingly more violent and dissociative - but honestly i don't think that's the most pertinent comparison when ottessa moshfegh's my year of rest and relaxation is like, right there with its Same Hat tone/style/characterisation and equally horrible-but-oh-god-mood protagonist. This is all to say that Irina being a stronza who engages in ‘bad’ behaviour, is not why I didn’t like this book. Meanwhile, her fixation with a shy Tesco cashier and a head full of drugs are amalgamating into a dangerous cocktail.In the beginning, with its stream of consciousness style of narration and the way it picks apart the disaffected youth culture of young working class British girls, BOY PARTS really reminded me of GREEN GIRL. Eliza Clark has relocated from her native Newcastle back to London, where she previously attended Chelsea College of Art. Densely packed mayo, jiggling about, doesn’t know what to do with its arms, doesn’t know what to do with its feet, undulating loosely, barely in time to the rhythm. There is also a lot of looking at how men with money can elbow their way into anything despite mediocrity, that there is ‘ still this entitled, still this generic, still this wealth of privilege and connections filling a void where there should be talent,’ and when they don’t get what they want they lash out. This book radiates the kind of feminist energy that Cara Delevingne wearing that ‘peg the patriarchy’ outfit at the met gala gives.