Penny Zang's Doll Parts: Dark Academia, Sylvia Plath, and Complicated Female Friendship

This week, I got to talk with Penny Zang about her debut novel Doll Parts! We dive into her inspiration for the story, the importance of music throughout, and the ways Sylvia Plath's life and writing influenced Doll Parts.

Doll Parts Synopsis

Some stories refuse to stay buried.

For best friends Nikki and Sadie, college was supposed to be a fresh start, a way to blast Courtney Love from car speakers and leave their youth behind. But along with sadness-obsessed girls and intrusive professors, a dark story plagues their small all-women's school: the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the deaths of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring students, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the tragic tales, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. As she digs deeper, Nikki soon suspects there's much more to the story - a suspicion that will lead to a tragedy of its own, one that will tear her and Sadie apart.

It's been nearly twenty years since Sadie last saw her estranged friend. Now, Nikki is dead, and when Sadie ends up pregnant by Nikki's grieving husband not long after the funeral, she finds herself stepping into her ex-best friend's seemingly perfect life. But the longer Sadie lives in Nikki's eerily preserved home, the more she sees her appear and soon, she's convinced that Nikki is sending her clues from beyond the grave. Because it seems Nikki never stopped looking for answers about what happened to the girls of the Sylvia Club, and she may have been its latest victim. 

Told in a dual timeline, Doll Parts is a provocative and irresistible debut, at once an exploration of the dark chasms that break apart friendships, an ode to the aching beauty of girlhood, and a sharp portrayal of grief that can physically haunt you. 

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Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian