Penance by Eliza Clark- Reading Diary (part 2)

This is part 2 of my reading diary for Penance so if you haven't read part 1 make sure to check it out. I recommend reading along with the book and seeing if you share the same thoughts and questions as me. There will be spoilers ahead!

Pages 200-335 

I read a slightly bigger chunk for this section of the diary but I feel like this section does come together as one. Violet's character is further explored and as I said previously her life up to this point in the novel had been rough. That’s putting it quite likely. I feel a point has been made about the traumas Violet has endured at home and how those that bully her are unaware of this. They just know she doesn’t fit in and that’s enough for her to deserve their cruelty. I think she’s a very realistic character. I feel the young people, particularly during school, will sort of remove themselves from social settings to avoid judgement. Her isolation is difficult to read. 

One thing I have loved is Violet's use of the internet. How she quietly has friends online but even these ‘friends’ don't really know her- she still has to pretend and make things up about herself to fit in. It’s almost like it's hardwired into us to think we won't be liked if we’re purely ourselves. I also like that Violet and Angelica have this type of online presence in common. Despite the fact they feel so different from each other. 

In this segment Dolly is becoming an increasingly dark figure; it's not like she’s unrealistic. Her bringing these girls and trying to summon demons and talk to ghosts actually reminded me of an event at my school. Obviously far less serious but some of the girls started saying they had seen ghosts and suddenly everyone had. There'd be discussions around tables at lunch and it mixed between all sorts of friendship groups. What reminded me of this in Clark’s writing is how characters like Violet and Angelica just go along with what Dolly is saying because it provides a sort of social oasis in the pretty miserable desert of secondary school. I remember hearing the stories about these ghosts and really not buying it, thinking back probably very few people did but we all went along with it just like Violet. One key difference here is that someone cried and told a teacher and we all got told off. Maybe if that happened in the fictional world of Crow-on-sea I’d be writing about a very different novel. 

I think Jayde is a really important character. She is the common sense that we as a reader can imagine ourselves having. She observes the weirdness of this group of girls, she notices how the others don’t buy into Dolly’s beliefs but go along with it. I really liked the moment where they try to summon something and actually just disturb a homeless man. Jayde recognising how Violet could have nipped it the bud felt like such a crucial moment when we know what this toxic friendship group ends up doing. I also think how Jayde is persecuted because of her sexuality and socio-economic status is very poignant. Even the way the extracts from the podcast mock her appearance or the spelling of her name. She is spoken of with such distaste even when she is the innocent party. Her relationship with Dolly is very interesting. As I was reading I kept thinking to myself; ‘why on earth is she with this girl?’ 

I wondered if she’s a bit of a people pleaser or if she’s was just lonely. This was something I wasn’t quite sure of but I suppose Dolly seemed fairly normal to begin with, although drama did follow her. Once Jayde is stuck with Dolly I could recognise why it's difficult to leave because, to put it lightly, Dolly is absolutely mental. 

Leaving Dolly for the last chapter is very interesting to me. We’ve had flashes of her from others perspectives but she’s still a bit of a mystery. We have seen the dark current of her character and how she controls others, becoming more and more toxic. I keep thinking back to what she does after the murder, right at the start of the novel. The driving around and not going home after suggests guilt or maybe remorse. It seems like something a character might do in shock or because they're scared about what comes next.. I want to really see the foundations of her character in the next section and work out why she is the way she is. I also want to know about her frogs. 

335- End 

I just knew the frogs were going to be relevant. 

As I was reading the whole book I found myself looking for clues about Dolly, she was quite a mysterious figure to me. Her dark interests were clear so were her issues with anger and control. For whatever reason I was quite surprised by her childishness in this section. It honestly makes a lot of sense. I found her fan fiction quite funny(?), if that's the right word. The poor writing, gushy language and just using the character names over and over again was a nice touch. I'm sure anyone who has been on the internet long enough has read some similar dribble. I found when the narrative was focusing on the other girls there was a fair amount of effort made by the narrator to make us empathise with them. With Dolly this is more complex. We learn that even as a child she threw tantrums and was aggressive but also that her parents' relationship was chaotic and that she was potentially abused by her father. However, this is something she denies. This left me in a confused place as a reader. The narrator and Dolly’s sister discuss this and whether it’s true, with the sister’s point of view being that something awful like that must have happened for her to be the way she is. This is where I also found myself. The other girls had these traumas, surely Dolly did too. The other characters notice behaviors that suggest it's valid. How she interacts with boys, how she plays with her toys, namely the frogs. Yet, I couldn’t remove the seed of doubt. Was I ,just like the characters, trying to find a reason for why Dolly was the way she was? Can people do such cruel things just because they want to and not because they’re damaged? 

I mentioned previously how I thought that Dolly driving around signified feelings of shame and guilt to me. This was sort of solidified in her posts online. However, she later deletes them and it's clear by the time she is being interviewed by the police that she’d back into her dark, incoherent mental sphere. I was unsure of this. It left me a bit unsure if she was almost hiding her regret because her role model ‘Matty’ didn’t show remorse or maybe she really had just fully lost it. Delved too deep when her mental state was too fragile. 

In terms of the actual crime taking place, I thought there’d maybe be more build up to it. I thought there would be some big event that led them to do what they did. I suppose for Dolly the stuff with Jayde  was enough and the other characters would just go along with what Dolly did. Maybe it was Joni’s willingness to go along with it that confused me. Teenagers will do mad things when they fancy someone but I wasn’t convinced she’d go with the girls when she knew at least two of them  actively despised her. This is a small detail though and I will mention further on its relevance.  

I think the murder itself was written well, which is a strange sentence to write. I think the narrator and Clark as a writer make a point of not writing graphic details of torture. I think it was a good note how Dolly and Angelica try to outdo each other though, it really echoed the pettiness of teenagers. Violet was incredibly frustrating, her thoughts about calling 999 but being too much of a coward are infuriating. It’s great to see a character who is shy and awkward and not being shown as overly innocent. She played a part in the murder even when she could have put a stop to it. 

Finally, we reach the end where we started from. Joni is dead and the girls punished. The town which during the narrator's writing was so afraid of being seen as the horror sight of Joni’s murder has now embraced it. If there’s money to be made people always will. This is one of the central criticisms in the book which leads us to the final interview with our narrator.  Alec as a narrator is problematic , he self inserts himself in the narrative constantly. We learn at the end that much of his interviews have not been reliably portrayed and that he has taken huge creative liberties in his writing. This bring me back to my confusion about Joni going with the girls- is this just Alec’s naivety to how teenage girls behave? 

I had hints of his strangeness when he described his daughter's death, how keen he is to bring it up, almost like it’s for sympathy points. He lies about Angelica’s father making snide comments. He shares her personal social media conversations and we learn he was planning to write about her death in a book. He was willing to find fame and attention all whilst making money off of his own daughter's suicide. His writing of the girls does the very thing he despises the podcasters for doing throughout. He is so keen to criticise others commodifying true crime yet can’t even recognise he does the exact same thing. He says he writes about it in an educational way, the exact same way Violet thought of herself. 

The town criticises true crime in their community yet embraces it when money can be made. Alec criticises true crime yet embraces it for fame and attention. As I was reading I criticised it. When I finished the book, I read the bibliography and looked up the real world crimes myself. It’s like we can’t help ourselves. 

Overall, this was a great book and I’d definitely recommend it. It explores how young people engage with the internet and each other. How cruelty and conditioning in those formal years left unchecked can lead to trajedy. How we separate ourselves from the real lives of victims and perpetrators in favour of a dramatic and entertaining story. It is a book that is brutal, sad, funny, and quite dark. Much like most teenage girls.