Penance is Eliza Clarke's second novel, published in 2023. In 2016, in the small town of Crow-on-Sea in Yorkshire, three girls - Angelica, Violet, and Dolly - murdered a classmate, Joan Wilson. Now in the present day, a true crime writer goes to Crow-on-Sea to get the story about what happened.
Tropes
- Ambiguous Situation:
- Whether Dolly was sexually abused by her father, as her stepsister thinks, is left ambiguous. Alec takes this story about Dolly's potential abuse very personally, and tells her that he would also go into his daughter's room to look after her when she was struggling with her mental health. Whether this is an Implied Rape situation for Dolly, Frances, or both is left very ambiguous. (Notably, Dolly makes Matty McKnight's parents the exact type of abusive Heather claims Dolly's parents were in her fanfiction, despite the McKnight couple being by all accounts perfectly nice people.)
- Whose idea was it to torture Joan, Angelica or Dolly? Or both of them? It's known they were the only two present for the entirety of Joan's torture, and it's stated that both girls blamed each other. Carelli suggests it was Dolly, but he's an Unreliable Narrator at best.
- Bystander Effect: Violet's role in Joan's brutal murder. She's present for the kidnapping and then gets locked out of the beach hut and stands outside all night while Dolly and Angelica horrifically torture and murder Joan, which takes hours. Though she calls the police, she hangs up before it connects.
- Butch Lesbian: Jayde is ostracized and bullied in Crow-on-Sea because she's stereotypically masculine (and from a poor background). It's suggested that Joan becomes friends with Jayde out of her own curiosity because Jayde made no effort to hide being a lesbian, but it's not known by anyone if Joan was actually a lesbian, if she was just curious, or if she wanted to be friends with Jayde.
- Depraved Bisexual:
- Dolly is bisexual and apparently tortured Joan and set her on fire because she was flirting with Dolly's girlfriend Jayde. While that was the theoretic trigger, there's plenty more to it than that.
- Possibly, Matty from the Cherry Creek massacre. He is known to have asked out a girl, but is also believed to have raped Brian, his co-conspirator in the shooting.
- Draco in Leather Pants: In-universe. Matty is a Fetishized Abuser by Dolly and her Tumblr friends, who view him as a misunderstood Byronic Hero. Alec points out that they ignore that he's also a Neo-Nazi who murdered a black kid in the shooting out of pure racism, an incel who shot a girl who rejected him (despite knowing she had a boyfriend), and possibly raped his co-conspirator before his suicide.
- Expy Coexistence: Joan's savage torture and murder by a group of female friends (apparently over a Love Triangle and culminating in being burned alive) is extremely reminiscent of the murder of Shanda Sharer
in the US. However, Jacque Vaught's donation of a dog to Melinda Loveless, one of Shanda's killers, is mentioned in the book itself (though no names are used). - Hypocrite: Vance Diamond, who as noted below was revealed to be a pedophile, was also a family friend of the Stirling-Stewarts, and Angelica's very conservative father stridently defended him in the press even as the evidence against him mounted—yet he himself refused to allow his daughters (and any female guests of similar age) to be alone with Diamond.
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Vance Diamond, a native of Crow-on-Sea who became a very popular and beloved media personality and philanthropist, and who was discovered to be a serial child molester and rapist, is obviously a reference to Jimmy Savile.
- Overshadowed by Controversy: In-universe. Joan's brutal murder happened on the night of the June 2016 Brexit referendum, and was not covered as much in the media as a result. Alec floats two reasons for this: possibly because it wasn't related in any way, but also because Angelica was the daughter of a low-rent rightwing pundit.
- Popularity Cycle: One of the major themes of the novel is how certain behavior can change from being regarded as "cool" to tragic in teens. Angelica and Alesha's behavior changed from being regarded as the peak of coolness to pathetic and uncool in secondary school, while Joan became more accepted for her supposed oddities.
- Psycho Lesbian: Discussed. It's common to assume that Joan was set alight because of Dolly's relationship with Jayde, and they are mocked often for being schoolgirl lesbians (but Jayde comes across as a decent person, and Dolly is suggested to be bisexual rather than gay).
- Rasputinian Death: Dolly, Violet, and Angelica kidnapped and savagely tortured Joan over an entire night before killing her by setting her on fire. She still lives for around an hour afterwards.
- Ron the Death Eater: In-universe, the Creekers again. As part of their whitewashing of Matty's actions, they write his victims as terrible people who provoked the shooting with their awful behavior (for instance, they portray his Black victim as a violent Jerk Jock who bullied Matty, and the female survivor as a heartless slut, so they don't have to accept their hero is a racist proto-incel).
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Angelica's stereotypical Alpha Bitch behavior, far from cementing her popularity, actually just annoyed and confused people and made them like her less, because being catty, insulting, and obsessed with imaginary hierarchies are unattractive qualities in a friend. For instance, she describes half her friend group as the "B-tier", less pretty and popular hangers-on to the "A-tier", in a way that wouldn't be out of place in a YA novel or teen movie...but everyone else in the group just thought of those girls as their friends and thought the A-tier/B-tier thing was weird.
- Take That!: The podcast transcribed within is a clear Expy of The Last Podcast on the Left, complete with a title riffing on a notorious 1970s movie (here, I Spit on Your Grave).
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Deconstructed. Lauren, a former friend of Angelica's, says (per Carelli's account of the interview, anyway) that Angelica was this—the girls found her mean and childish and would make fun of her behind her back. However, Lauren now feels terrible about how they all treated Angelica, noting that they made fun of her for harmless things like enjoying musicals and could get just as mean, and can't help but blame herself for not stopping everyone from picking on her.
- Trashy True Crime: Every which way.
- Alec Carelli is a hack writer who exploits the memories of people involved in notorious crimes to "rebrand" himself, including with the Joan Wilson murder. It's revealed that he promised to leave alone the people involved while actually drawing people to Crow-on-Sea, and that large parts of the book are exaggerated or outright fabrications.
- The American podcast quoted within are depicted as mocking the "lezzy English schoolgirls".
- Dolly and her online community are obsessive fans of the Cherry Creek massacre.
- Unreliable Narrator: The in-universe introduction and the attached interview afterwards both state that Carelli's relationship with the truth is flexible at best. Many details are extrapolations or bald-faced lies, and he portrays his investigation as a lot more sensitive and a lot less unwelcome than it actually was. The biggest example is the supposed correspondence from Angelica, Violet, and Dolly—they never wrote him letters, he bribed prison employees for access to their psychiatric records.
