Creep: A Love Story by Emma van Straaten

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I sped through this, it was such a juicy read.

At first I was mad...Emma van Straaten seems like the whitest name ever. Alice in Creep is a bi-racial, overweight British Indian woman. Halfway through the book, I looked up van Straaten and was delighted to find out that she does, in fact, relate a lot to her main character, and she was writing from experience. As a bi-racial (Indian and white) woman, a lot of the "horror" in this book was directly related to both my childhood and the dreaded approach of middle age.

Alice is severely mentally ill. She hates herself, her body, her ethnic looks. But she's obsessed with Tom aka Him, the man whose apartment she cleans once a week. She violates his space every time: curling up in his bed, collecting his trash, licking his toothbrush, and more and more horrible things that become more extreme as the novel goes on. Honestly, don't read this book while eating, because it was seriously gross.

She has willingly separated herself from the two people who love and support her the most, her (white) mother and bi-racial sister. She's stuck with co-workers she doesn't identify with, despite their cloying kindness. She gets set up with a nice guy who loves her looks, but her toxic mindset sabotages any attempts at happiness or acceptance.

The writing skirts into Kathe Koja territory, with sex, bodily fluids, violence, and hate all mixed up together in a rancid stew. If you are a fan of the movies Evil Dead Trap 2 (about an overweight Asian female serial killer) or May (a strange girl becomes obsessed with a young man who doesn't understand her extreme interests), then you will love Creep. Also Koja, like I mentioned above, some of Kolesnik's Waif, and maybe a dash of Cronenberg, if you love damaged characters who you can't help but pity and hate at the same time as they spiral into self destruction.



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