Boy Parts
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Average rating4.1
An incendiary debut novel from a brash new talent--a pitch-black comedy, both shocking and hilarious, which fearlessly explores sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century. "Hallucinogenic, electric and sharp, Boy Parts is a whirlwind exploration of gender, class, and power."--Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater Exiled from the art world and on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. But her talent has not gone unnoticed, and Irina is invited to display her work at a fashionable London gallery. It is a chance to revive her career and escape from the rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema she's fallen into. Yet the news instead triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centered around Irina's consuming relationship with her best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention. . . .
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“I could do that, if I wanted, you know? I could train a camera on a man and look at him like a man looks at a woman; boys, too, could be objects of desire.”
I....am actually really squeamish, so this book very nearly broke me. Wow, Irina is a piece of work. Utterly horrifying. I'm going to tag this horror, because parts of this were incredibly explicit and gorey and bloody and I wanted to stop but absolutely couldn't. It also made me glad that I've never been much of a party-goer. The ending was utterly fantastic, how Irina seems to have completely dissociated with reality, like an hallucination, with the image of glass bringing the book to a close in the best possible way. I think this was so right about so much of modern Britain... Too right, painfully right.
