“Was it my idea to have him hurt me, or did he just let me think it was?”
If you’re on the prowl for books like Boy Parts by Eliza Clark, you’re probably not looking for something neat, comforting, or morally tidy. You want dark, provocative fiction that leans into obsession, power, and deeply flawed women who refuse to be likeable. Boy Parts sits firmly in the realm of transgressive literary fiction, blending feminist rage, sexuality, and satire in a way that’s both disturbing and compulsively readable. The novels on this list capture a similar mode – books with morally grey female protagonists, uncomfortable topics, and a willingness to push boundaries. From dark literary fiction that explores control and desire to female rage novels that challenge how women are expected to behave on the page, these stories all share Boy Parts’ unflinching intensity.
Boy Parts Summary
Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, plucked straight from the Newcastle streets she calls home. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape path from her rut of drugs, drink, and extreme cinema.
The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, orbiting around Irina’s obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has drawn her attention. Boy Parts is an incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy equal parts harrowing and hilarious, fearlessly immersing readers in the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the modern age.
Tampa – Alissa Nutting
Kicking off our list of books like Boy Parts is Alissa Nutting’s Tampa, a dark and savage take on consumer culture, youth, and beauty standards. Celeste Price is twenty-six-years-old, beautiful, smart, married to a handsome man with money, and starting a new job as a junior high school teacher in suburban Tampa.
Yet, Celeste harbours a dark secret. She is driven by a singular sexual obsession – fourteen-year-old boys. As the school year gets underway, Celeste has chosen and seduced the naive Jack Patrick, a quiet, thoughtful boy in awe of his teacher. But when her lustful frenzy starts to spiral out of control, the insatiable Celeste bypasses each hurdle with swift thinking and shameless determination, much like our girl Irinia.
Eileen – Ottessa Moshfegh
The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman caught between her life caring for her alcoholic father and her day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and fuels her nights with shoplifting and stalking a buff prison guard named Randy.
When the bright and bubbly Rebecca Saint John arrives as the new prison counsellor at Moorehead, Eileen is immediately enthralled. However, her affection for Rebecca soon pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings. Creepy, mesmerising, and sublimely funny like Boy Parts, Eileen is the Hemingway Award-winning debut novel from serial bestselling author Ottessa Moshfegh.
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The Girls – Emma Cline
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of the summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, and their dangerous aura of abandonment. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerising older girl, and is pulled into a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader.
Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged – a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from the rhythms of her daily life, and her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realise she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence and to the moment in a girl’s life when everything can go horribly wrong.
Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn
Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town.
Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the victims – perhaps a bit too strongly. Similar to Boy Parts, she is dogged by her own demons, and must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story – and survive this homecoming.
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The Vegetarian – Han Kang
Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, everyday life. But the dreams – invasive images of blood and brutality – torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and stop eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home.
As her husband, her brother-in-law, and sister fight to assert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon, their attempts turn desperate, subjecting both her mind and body to ever more intrusive and perverse violations. Like Boy Parts, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.
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Luster – Raven Leilani
Edie is just trying to survive. She is messing up her dead-end job in an all-white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting. No one seems to care that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for her next hookup. And then she meets Eric, a white middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort of agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter.
As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young black woman wasn’t already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling headfirst into Eric’s home and family. Razor-sharp, provocatively page-turning, and surprisingly tender, Luster is a painfully funny debut similar to Boy Parts about what it means to be young now.
Everything Here Is Beautiful – Mira T. Lee
Two Chinese-American sisters – Miranda, the older, responsible one, always her younger sister’s protector; Lucia, the headstrong, unpredictable one, whose impulses are huge and life-changing. When Lucia begins hearing voices, it is Miranda who must find a way to reach her sister. Lucia impetuously ploughs ahead, but the bitter constraint is that she is, in fact, mentally ill. Lucia lives life on a grand scale until, inevitably, she crashes to earth.
Miranda leaves her own self-contained life in Switzerland to rescue her sister again – but only Lucia can decide whether she wants to be saved. The bonds of sisterly devotion stretch across oceans – but what does it take to break them? Everything Here Is Beautiful is a story of a young woman’s quest to find fulfilment and a life unconstrained by her illness, making it a perfect follow-up if you loved Eliza Clark’s book.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
