CONTENT WARNING: I was almost physically sick reading this book. But, I also finished it in two days, and couldn’t put it down. Which made me feel conflicted. Which, I think, is Clark’s whole point. And we’ll get into that. But all of this is to say: murder (via arson), frequent references to school shootings, disturbing internet behaviors, and more abound in this book, so tread carefully.

Last summer, I read Trust by Hernan Diaz. My knowledge of the finance industry is limited to a weekly perusal of FT Weekend and occasional text to one of my brothers asking them if I should buy high-yield treasury bonds (the answer is usually yes, and I usually end up forgetting to do it anyways). So while the book’s structure was creative and concept intriguing, I found myself yawning my way through the parts that featured the financier - which is to say, I found an entire third of the book difficult to engage with. That hardly earns it a spot in my pantheon of literary faves, but I certainly awarded points for creativity. But, as titles like Trust, and Trust Exercise (which I’ve previously recommended) suggest: when you purchase the book, you know what you’re in for. You’re not sure how the author will invert the truth, but you know from the outset not to take everything you read at face value.

I picked up Penance entirely unprepared. I’m not sure where I first heard about (I sent an outgoing text to two friends on August 5th, 2023, that said “I heard Penanceb [sic, my texts are a chaotic, unedited stream of consciousness at the best of times] is amazing…” I’m not sure where I heard this - it may have been featured at one of the countless, well-curated bookstores I fill my free hours perusing, it may have been on a Best of 2023 Books list, but regardless, it crossed my desk. I didn’t get around to reading it until this week, after seeing it featured prominently on a table in Books Are Magic and finally making the purchase.

Penance’s synopsis is bleak enough as it is. And I need to preface this review with that. I can handle sad books (I read A Little Life in PUBLIC, for God’s sake! But yes, I cried). But this book’s summary goes beyond sad, veering into evil, sadistic territory. So, with a content warning, I’ll tell you that this book is about a girl named Joan (Joni) Wilson, who is murdered (via arson) by three of her classmates in 2016 in a small town in Northern England called Crow-on-Sea. The murder happens on the evening of Brexit, so it gets largely swallowed by political press.

A decade later, former crime journalist Alec Z. Carelli, who has faded into relative obscurity after two unsuccessful books, comes across the story on a true crime podcast, hosted by two young men. He’s disgusted by the boys’ disrespectful treatment of the murder and decides to write a book on what happened. Carelli’s goal is to approach the murders from a holistic, empathetic perspective. He spends years living in Crow-on-Sea and interviewing relatives of each perpetrator alongside the family of the victim, and multiple other town residents who are tangentially connected to the events.

Clark’s book is Carelli’s book (she’s writing as him; if you’ve read Daisy Jones & the Six, Penance follows the same format, with more sinister results). The story opens with podcast transcripts about the murder before Carelli launches into his own account of what happened, broadly. From there, he dedicates a part of the book to each of the perpetrators; as the girls were minors when tried, they initially remained anonymous in court transcripts and the press, and were referred to as Girl A, B, and C (there’s also a section for Girl D, who was falsely accused), which is how each of their sections is titled. Each girl’s section explores their family backgrounds, social and academic experiences, relationships with Joni, and the signs that may have suggested they were capable of committing such a heinous act.

Here’s the thing: these sections barely touch on the murder. They paint each girl as a flawed human dealing with the difficult life circumstances attached to coming-of-age, especially in a small town where there’s nowhere to escape to if you’re perceived as ‘different.’ You learn how they each found communities of kindreds online - which seemed to start innocently enough (except in one case, which we’ll get to) before they snowballed. You learn about how Joni bullied them, and the things she, specifically, did to make their lives harder. At no point did I find myself sympathizing with the murderers, but it was clear - and unsettling - that that was “Carelli’s” intention.

By the time we get to Girl C, who, we learn within the first 50 pages of the book, is named Dolly and is the ringleader of the murder, we haven’t been confronted with the grisly details of what happened for hundreds of pages. We’re completely separated from them and immersed in the emotional worlds of these teenage girls trying to find their places. Girl C, however, is deeply disturbed - finding herself immersed in “fandoms” dedicated to school shooters (I could not bring myself to google whether these were real simply because I’m almost certain they are and that makes me lose quite a bit of hope in humanity), determined to wreak havoc on Crow-on-Sea in an attempt to “channel” Matty McKnight, a horrific (and thankfully fictional) school shooter that she is obsessed with.

It was during Dolly’s section that I found myself feeling physically sick (I’d prefer not to go into detail, but if you read the book, you should know what you’re getting into) and not sure if I’d be able to go on reading, but I kept going—which is a credit to the brilliant narrative structure, not the book’s plot, which I still find difficult to grapple with. It’s towards the end of Dolly’s section that Carelli drops the gruesome details of the murder back in our lap, and we are reminded that the girls he’s spent 300+ pages trying to convince us are flawed humans (and minors to boot), are actually sadistic murderers, none of whom deserved an inch of graceful or empathetic column space in his story.

When the story concludes - a story in which Carelli has spent countless pages harping on the unethical, uncouth nature of true crime podcasting and reddit forums (and a ton of time dissecting the reddit and tumblr forums that the murderers themselves spent hours on - and may have gotten “inspiration from”) - we realize that Carelli himself isn’t a reliable narrator, either. He is accused of inciting emotional manipulation and causing emotional distress, using material without consent, and misrepresenting the narratives of many of the people he interviewed.

The book ends with a faux-Guardian interview where another journalist prods Carelli for details on why he took these emotionally manipulative creative liberties with the truth in the publishing of this book. He maintains that it was a journalistic decision and that he didn’t misrepresent any facts, simply embellished them to add more color to the interior lives of everyone involved, to create a fuller picture of the girls behind the murder, and Joni herself. And, in a way, Carelli, who is so derisive with regards to the poorly written and deeply unsettling “fanfic” Dolly spends hours writing, tells on himself for doing the same - he, like Dolly with Matty McKnight - is romanticizing and contextualizing a senseless murder, he’s just cloaking it in higher-quality prose. The end of the book begs the question: is any level of consuming true crime as content ethical? Clark seems to say no - and, after this…I’m inclined to agree.