Boy Parts

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She’s naive, pathetic, obnoxious, solipsistic, cruel, and superficial…but I found her acts of self-dramatization to be both fascinating and a source of great amusement.

The story could have been a lot more effective if the tone had been camped up, so we could have something along the lines of Jennifer’s Body (which is by no means a perfect film but at least it's entertaining and self-aware). it is hinted that irina has become this way because she suffered sexual abuse in her childhood and teenage years. I am so f*cking tired of books that make the mc bisexual because it’s edgy and ‘different’ but then proceed to have said character almost exclusively engage in sexual/romantic relationships with men. Despite the darkness, she was drawn to the character, in part because there is still a relative dearth of stories about young women from the north-east of England. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best-friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention.Men lash out at her and she is often in danger (her works bring out a LOT of bad behavior from the men) and some of the violence is legitimate self-defense. Highly recommend and understand the hype, but just a heads up, this is definitely one of those, “no plot just vibes”, books. Which maybe isn't much of a surprise if you ask yourself-- what kind of person would willingly stay in the orbit of a sociopath? I don't really possess the high emotional and mental capacity required to actually read and process this kind of stuff. She obsessively takes explicit photographs of average-looking men she scouts from the streets of Newcastle while her dead-end bar job slips away; she’s more interested in drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema.

Thing is, this kind of obvious ‘appropriation’ of the male gaze and the misogyny often underlining said gaze is not new nor thought-provoking. When the mother of one young model – “I’d scouted him on the bus and suspected he may have been in sixth form” – tracks her down at her bar job, Irina leaves to focus on her photography, which she’s been invited to show at an exhibition of contemporary fetish art in London. When she's offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery which promises to revive her career in the art world, it should feel like an escape. All of this to say is that I can deal with and even appreciate characters who for whatever reason do, think, or say things that are ‘frowned’ upon or downright evil. all three books have similarly strong existentialist overtones (irina: "i explain to him that nothing matters, and nothing lasts.Celebrate Northern literary talent, pick up this book, and let the kaleidoscopic vortex sweep you away. the unreliable narration, the critique of gender roles/power dynamics, and dark social commentary with such an addictive writing style was exquisite. Not unlike Psycho we do see this as a criticism on wealth and consumerism as one of the themes—amusingly, Irina gets termed as a ‘working-class’ artist despite being able to afford fancy universities something she has an uneasy relationship with seeing it as both an insult but not upset it can help open doors for her—and, well, the violence and unreliable narration.

I wish that the story had committed to paint her as a morally reprehensible character we were meant not to like. This is all to say that Irina being a stronza who engages in ‘bad’ behaviour, is not why I didn’t like this book. She is keen to bring out the psychological thriller aspects of the text and has been thinking a lot about Hitchcock. This is one of those cases where I am forced to ask myself: did I read the same book as everybody else?i felt bad for flo, she was the collateral damage in all of irina's outbursts, and just in a roundabout friendship with her. A major ingredient in the story is her gaze and the gaze in general,” which is something they are exploring in the rehearsal process, mindful of the fact that performing the monologue alone to an audience brings an extra dimension.