Cruddy

by Lynda Barry

On a September night in 1971, a few days after getting busted for dropping acid, a sixteen-year-old curls up in the corner of her ratty bedroom and begins to write.
Now the truth can finally be revealed about the mysterious day long ago when the authorities found a child, calmly walking in the boiling desert, covered with blood.
The girl is Roberta Rohbeson, and her rant against a world bounded by "the cruddy top bedroom of a cruddy rental house on a very cruddy mud road" soon becomes a detailed account of another story, one that she has kept silent since she was eleven.
Darkly funny and resonant with humanity, Cruddy, masterfully intertwines Roberta's stories -- part Easy Rider and part bipolar Wizard of Oz. These stories, the backbone of Roberta's short life, include a one-way trip across America fueled by revenge and greed and a vivid cast of characters, starring Roberta's dangerous father, the owners of the Knocking Hammer Bar-cum-slaughterhouse, and runaway adolescents. With a teenager's eye for freakish detail and a nervous ability to make the most horrible scenes seem hilarious, Cruddy is a stunning achievement.

Genres: Fiction, Graphic Novels, Young Adult, Comics, Novels, Coming Of Age, Book Club

305 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Lynda Barry is an American cartoonist and author, perhaps best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek.

Reviews

[Donkeyballs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll never understand why drippy guys like Eggers and Franzen get such Oproid levels of attention for their emotion stuff, creeps like Klosterman and Self get fanboy appreciation for their dark violence, and most women writers get shunted (albeit loudly) into the chick lit ghetto, and yet Lynda Barry is still under our radar.

This book is powerful, stunning in its emotional depth, redolent of the dark corners of youth, violent and scary. Definitely not chick lit. Lynda Barry is probably the most undervalued literary artist in America

And I should add to my above injustices piss-poor draughtsmen like Ware and Spiegelman getting Pulitzer-level attention for their crappy drawings and bogusly opaque writing (in the case of Ware) or theft (in the case of Spiegelman's skull-fucking his father's travails in the camps. While Cruddy is not a comic, Barry has indeed already written the great American novel. It is the collected Marlys comics. Read those, too.

[alyssa carver · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's hard to say why i love this book so much. nope--got it. it's because lynda barry captures the combination of anguish and delusional hope that is particular to adolescent girls who hate themselves and everyone else too but nonetheless maintain the powerful and naive belief that someday they will be loved. and in pursuit of that life-saving belief in love, they will scarifice themselves to almost anything.

sad? yes. but she makes it so funny, too, in spite of all the acid-tripping, kidnapping, child-molesting and murdering.

the plot defies synopsis. just look at the "map" the author provides on the inside cover. (the illustrations are a big plus even if you're not the kind of person who needs pictures to stay interested.) but here's the key element/source of my love: our little heroine kicks ass and survives.

* when i say i recommend it for the teenage girl in you, i don't mean in an emotionally-retarded, i-still-read-seventeen-magazine, thwarted-childhood way. i'm talking about that inner fireball of fury that should never die.

[Eva Celeste · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I learned from this book is that my life is not as weird, twisted, or unfortunate as I thought it was. My father may have taken me to bars as a toddler and let the old men play with me, but he never cut off my finger or had me shave my head and pretend to be a mute Mongoloid of the opposite gender. I may not always like my life or chosen profession, but at least I'm not morbidly obese with a blue tooth stuck running a bar that's a front for grinding up the corpses of murdered people. I do not live in Nevada on the border of a nuclear test zone, and my father was never called the "Powder Monkey". I have breasts. I have seen absolutely zero people get their throats slit in real life. I will just leave it at that. That said, I recommend this book highly. And sit here wondering how it left me feeling so good, and strangely hopeful about the beauty of life. Read it if you dare.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most disturbing and grotesque books I've ever read, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I would have gotten more out of it if only I had at some point done a lot of psychotropic drugs. I can't say I enjoyed this book, but I was kind of amazed by it. I think the story and the characters are on a level of screwed up I am nowhere close to - and by the end of the novel I was really very grateful for that. This is a reading experience of shock and awe, maybe, then. I honestly can't say how much of Cruddy was a little over the top, and how much was just something I've never experienced and so seemed to me a little unrealistic. I didn't relate to the characters at all, nor did I like them, and I had trouble even feeling sympathy for them most of the time. Sometimes a really interesting or original thought from one of them would shine through, but it never really redeemed the book for me.

All that being said, I think this is an excellent book, just maybe not for me. It's amazingly gutsy and I've never read anything more emotionally raw and brutal. Cruddy is certainly more worthwhile and original than many of the more critically acclaimed, self-important, "dark" contemporary works.

I loved that the main character wasn't ugly-but-not-really-ugly, or sexy-ugly, or ugly-until-the-makeover or whatever; no, she was described several times as being really, really truly messed up looking. A couple of times in the novel other characters recoil from her countenance in revulsion or horror. There just aren't enough really unattractive protagonists in literature. I kind of think Lynda Barry took all the painfully awkward and horrible feelings of adolescence, intensified them to a radioactive level, and then put them in a literal context, all onto one character. Imagine if things really were as bad as they felt when you were 13? If your insides really were your outsides, every secret fear a boil on your face? If it sounds like it might be intense and a little difficult to read, it is. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no matter what kind of problems you might have... this book will give you a little perspective on how it could be worse.

I'm glad that I read this book, but I can't see myself reading it again for quite a while, and I can't possibly imagine who I would recommend it to. I think if I knew someone that I thought should be reading this book, what I would recommend to them instead would be about ten different kinds of intensive therapy.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book!! I've been meaning to read Barry for awhile and came across a copy of Cruddy and went for it. I don't know where to place this book. It's the story of a girl named Roberta who may very well of had the most miserable existence anyone could conjur up, and it unveils itself in a stream of off the wall disaster and heartbreaking realizations. Two narrative rn parallel to each other as Roberta accounts both from her "restricted life;" she's grounded. One narrative is the story of how she got grounded, due to ditching school and partaking in a 24 hour LSD trip that takes her all through her "cruddy" hometown and ends in a fatal disaster. The other takes the form of a viciously horrific tale of five years prior when Roberta, then 11, is kidnapped by her father and brought along on a homocidal road trip in search of a denied fortune and easily the most distubing and terrifying father daughter bonding vacation anyone could conjur up.

The LSD tale strangely follows a Wizard of Oz like structure as she journeys in a psychedelic confusion with her colorful cast of teenage acquaintances: the Turtle, the Stick, the Great Wesley, the Monkey, and Vickie Tallusoj ("The Violent One"), the j is silent. The father story is so much like the Hobbit or Treasure Island but is also one of the most traumatizing and terribly brutal stories I've read (I think ever). You will cringe, you will hate everyone Roberta comes in contact with, save maybe one person, this story will make you despise humanity as this brutal and gruesome account of the murderous grifter father and his enlisting of his 11 year year old daughter as an accomplice unfolds. It is an ungodly tale, but completely impossibe to put down.

Read this book, and though its near certan that the book will ruin your day, its brilliant storytelling, awesome illustrations, and poignant realizations make it more than worth the heartache it will induce. Lynda Barry might be a genius.

"Twinkle twinkle little star. You are nothing. You've been dead for a thousand years..."

[Lucy Dacus · Rating 5 out of 5]

So dark! Sometimes funny! Felt kinda YA at first because it opens as a diary of a teenage girl, but it quickly moves away from that into unhinged absurdity. It's a gorey, bloody mess, but fun to read. (Thanks for the gift, Meg <3)

[Laurie (barksbooks) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a lot of ugly things in my life but this book touches on a deeper level because of this young child's age and the horrors she endures daily in her truly "cruddy" life. If it weren't so darned sad it'd be almost funny. Wish this book had been around when I was 14 or so and my own life may not have looked quite so bleak to me after having read it. The author has a knack for digging into an adolescent's mind and really brings that painful period of time of young adulthood (those ugly years when one is 13 - 17) alive in a brilliantly, devastating way.

The cruelties continue to the very last page . Somehow I wasn't left feeling depressed but actually relieved at the eventual outcome. I can't say it was an altogether enjoyable reading experience, although I did laugh a few times, but I sure couldn't stop turning the pages. The illustrations completely capture the feel of the book.

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is amazing! It's super American: sentimental and grungy as a Tom Waits ballad, violent and bleak as a Jim Thompson noir, monstruous as a black and white fringy Hollywood '50s horror/sci fi epic, and as particular and atmospheric as a David Lynch film. Maybe we could talk the great director into filming this perfect, teenage gem before he retires. I really loved just about everything about it. I only wish I could see the illustrations in color.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 stars. With as much as I read, it is nice to come across a "one of a kind" read that doesn't feel like anything else you have read. This book certainly fits the bill and I highly recommend it...WITH A WARNING!! This is a dark and disturbing tale about a young, abused girl named Roberta who is on a psychotic road trip with her homicidal father after leaving the equally troubling home of abusive mother. There are NO NICE CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK. That said, what is truly remarkable about the book (and what I liked most about it) is that despite how bad things are for Roberta, she isn't sitting around asking for sympathy or wallowing in self pity. Roberta has a tremendous amount of inner strength and her story is told with humor and a "I can deal with it" attitude that makes you want to read on and walk along with Roberta in her travels. She takes life as she finds it and makes it through (though I suppose you could easily argue that the end of the story which is told at the beginning of the book is a "cops out", it doesn't come across that way in within the confines of her story). I am glad I read it. Recommended!!

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pitch black coming-of-age story told twice, first time scrawled with a butcher's knife and second time as a drug-induced hallucination. Our charismatic narrator makes this journal to hell's junkyard completely captivating and often funny as shit. Brilliant on the sentence level and deeply moving. Glad I read this years after writing "Mira Corpora."

[Jodi Sh. · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Bukowski and Harry Crews had a girl-baby, and dubbed R. Crumb the godfather, that girl-baby might be Lynda Barry. I have no idea how this book is listed as a YA novel, which is where I got it from in the library. I picked it up because I love The Greatest of Marlys. But, man oh man-alive, I did not see this coming. There are very few redeemable characters, certainly not a single adult and every teenager is fucked up in some serious way - occasionally endearing, most of the time you want to stuff a rock in their mouths (yes, you Vicky Talluso, you are a mean girl). All are unlovable or at the very least, unloved, most notably the narrator, Roberta, whose own father calls her Clyde and passes her off as a "mongoloid" with falling disease (to account for her broken face and multiple bruises).

Roberta/Clyde is far from brain damaged, she is a wonderful storyteller, broken in a way that may break your heart.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

My brother and I read this book to each other outloud one christmas. If you grew up the same way I did, it will make you feel like you are normal. If you did not, for example, if you had a pool table, a home without wheels, or a kitchen table that was actually used - or if you otherwise had a parent who knew how to use the stove - this book might disturb you. You will think it is science fiction or fiction or otherwise improbable. It is not,

[Jackdaw ☄ Bronteroc · Rating 5 out of 5]

“See what a shit world we live in, Clyde?”

[Lucía · Rating 3 out of 5]

A relentlessly violent, hippie-era Matilda, where the drugged-out teenage narrator has a knife instead of telekinesis, and the sole sympathetic adult character can't rescue her from the cruelty of the adult world. Also, it's a road story. And really funny. And sad and scary.

[Twodogs333 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow! This book was such a waste of my time. It was like listening to a severely drunk/ drugged up person spewing their BS story of their life gone awry. I read it to the end, but I wish I could have my time back!

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might sound crazy but I think Cruddy ranks up there in the same class as the best of Cormac McCarthy and Larry Brown. JT Leroy fans will also find much to love in this dark and strange tale.

[Andrew Schultheis · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 cruddy stars

[Jenny Donahue · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, Lynda Barry is fucking awesome. Watch her speak on youtube. Why is that the people who create the most disturbing shit are the people who seem the most optimistic, happy, and stable? They are onto something.

My art school grad student teacher had us reading quite a few graphic novels with intense material. I judged Cruddy by the cover. I expected it to be bland and depressing like the girl.. thing.. person on the cover. Depressing, it was. But somehow Barry managed to make depressing into the most hilariously disturbing philosophical book I have ever read. (That seems to be a theme for me- disturbing done RIGHT). Cruddy describes the ugly world that the main character, a teenager named Roberta, lives it. Roberta is described as equally ugly, hence the cover. This is her story of her tragic life. She is usually the passive observer in the midst of constant chaos around her at home, on the run with her dangerous father, and with her friends. Expect more dark illustrations throughout the book. This book is totally underrated! It probably the most original book I've ever read. Barry's writing style that combines naivety, grossness (for lack of a better word), and humor to create an impressive depth.

[christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Words and phrases from my friend Jodi's review of the novel Cruddy by Lynda Barry that made it absolutely mandatory that I read it stat:

"Slaughterhouse."
"... bodies left in their wake."
"Horrifying."
"Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach."
And the ultimate deal sealer:
"There were paragraphs I had to skip over because the descriptions of slaughter and dead bodies were too graphic for me. In fact, my stomach jumps a little and I shiver just thinking about them. Blech."

"Sold!" I wrote in the comments. Because if there is one thing I like in a novel, it is a clever spin on yuck. When I can read or watch something that makes my knees deflate, my stomach bounce, and my dry heaver heave, I become absolutely giddy. Let us not forget the delicious scene in Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell, when our hero extracts a piece of his own leg bone to create a sharp piece of weaponry. Gag (in a good way). Or in the Ryu Murakami novel Audition when the psychopath fiance goes see-saw kitchen tool all over an Achilles Tendon. Curdled (still in a good way). Well done gross is my literary weakness.

Kudos to Barry for writing a book I could actually smell. This illustrated novel reeks of cigarettes, booze, blood, bodies, garbage, piss and breath. It smells like oily hair, cheap hotel rooms, and mounds of animal excrement. There is a severed penis.

This story is written as Roberta Rohbeson's suicide letter, and tells the story of the time she traveled around the country with her old man in search of suitcases filled with money that he believed rightfully belonged to him. It's less of a "how I spent my summer vacation" essay and more of a graphic "how I learned to use a knife I named Little Debbie" essay. And if this wasn't confusing enough for the young Roberta, her father made her go by the name Clyde, a mute and wickedly bruised son. In present time, around the time the gruesome suicide note is being written, Roberta has been grounded for bad behavior with the neighborhood misfits. This isn't any more wholesome than the death spree, as they rut, get whacked out on unknown substances, and otherwise run ragged.

This book is sick, with surprising moments of funny. It's confusing, heavy and sad. And it is more than a gore fest for this gore-hungry gal. It's a gripping and unique story and the writing is a complete sensory overload (still in a good way). It is also a lot terrifying, in that way that Roberta (both as Roberta and as Clyde) is stuck in an unstable lose-lose situation where her mother might bean her with a telephone, until her nose bends like a boxer's nose; Her father might knife her in the gut. It makes her escape, her happy place, seem pretty comfortable: Getting cozy with train tracks.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is some sick shit. I took a break from "We Are Not Afraid" to finish this for Bar Book Club, reading the last pages before stepping out the door to see the new Batman movie. So basically the last few days of my life, I have been mired in a lot of dark, depressing, and "sick shit," at least in terms of reading and viewing material. To transition from a book about the lynching of Civil Rights workers to a bloody, murderful saga of child abuse, outsiderness, and general psychosis - tis not a happy thing. After finishing Cruddy (which ends in suicide <-- not a spoiler as the book opens with this info), I had to watch three episodes of Arrested Development before I was without heebie jeebies.

Especially disturbing about "Cruddy" was the nagging knowledge that children do in fact experience this level of abuse. (My uncle works as a rec therapist for juvenile offenders, most of which have been terribly abused, stories you don't want to believe are true.) For me, the most poignant aspect of reading "Cruddy" was the realization that for some (not just Roberta) death really is the happy ending. However, if you can stomach the violence, the story is very skillfully crafted, beautiful writing popping up out of the sickness, and the mystery makes it completely addicting.

[Korynn · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book that made me feel physically ill. Every description of every person, place or thing in this book is purposefully described in the most repulsive and disgusting manner. The narrative is terribly worrisome. We have a teen, Roberta who desires to escape, whether by death or drugs, as she lives in an abusive household in a highly unappealing town. No one is described in a manner that makes them appealing or trustworthy. If this book was purposefully written to be an antithesis of all the teen books that point out how drugs, sex, and murder, are bad and to dismiss the fairytale that all people are good at heart, it succeeds in spades. Everyone featured in this book is morally corrupt, including our narrator who tells us via flashback of the many murders she witnessed that were perpetuated by her father (because of money) until she too murders others to protect herself or to cause trouble to those who would come after her...and she does not show any remorse or concern (excepting one or two special cases). The characters are described as escapees from a freakshow and the whole narrative is bizarre but linear. Frankly, this book worries me...and I don't get it.

[Chriso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, I can barely put into words how amazing this book is. I always adored Lynda Barry's work but this came out and it's like she destroyed and reinvented herself with every turn of the page. It's a truly amazing, chilling, dark, wonderful, upsetting book.

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't quite read the blurb to clearly before going into it. I thought it was more of a YA and it's definitely not. Would been extremely freaked out if I had read it in my teen years. Not sure why I liked it so much. A very strange book but yet an very interesting read

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

“East Crawford is a road of trash people. Teeth missing and greasy two-color hair on the women and regular greasy hair on the men and all of the people come in two sizes only, very fat or very skinny. And all of them are hacking and all of them are huffing on cigs constantly. It is very hard not to smoke here.”

“It wasn't her fault that the father wandered into her life. Chance blew the father in a lot of directions. He rolled around this way and he rolled around that way, deforming everything he brushed up against.”

It is the early 1970s, somewhere in the southwest, as we are introduced to sixteen year old Roberta Rohbeson. She is hunkered down in her “cruddy” house, in her “cruddy” bedroom, and begins to write her memoir. Oh, the stories, she begins to tell...

I know this is a literary cliché, but this is truly a one of a kind book and will not be for everyone. It is dark, disturbing and even grotesque at times. It is a mash-up of Naked Lunch, Paper Moon and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Fans of the equally twisted Geek Love will rejoice. There is a steady flow of violence, drug use and parental abuse. It is also beautifully written. There are also impressive illustrations, by the author, that kick off each chapter. I had not read or heard of Lynda Barry before, but what a stunning introduction this is and Roberta is a character for the ages.

[Mateen Mahboubi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lynda Barry is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors as I dig into her books. This is definitely one of the darker books that I've read. Barry doesn't hold anything back and we don't really come across too many sympathetic characters along the way. A thrilling, violent, dirty, alcohol/drug-soaked adventure in family and friendship.

[Jason Estrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the very first case of 'don't judge a book by its cover' that I have been affiliated with. A roommate had a dogeared and water damaged copy laying on a stack of magazines and every time I passed it I added another layer of resentment for the book. My right hand, of its own accord, grabbed it off the magazine stack as I walked outside for a smoke. First sentences are said to sell or destroy a book. I will type Lynda Barry's sentence so you too can move beyond the cover and get hooked like I did.

"Once upon a cruddy time on a cruddy street on the side of a cruddy hill in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town in a cruddy state, country, world, solar system, universe."

This is not really the first sentence of the book. It is the first sentence of chapter two. For me, this is where the story began.
Also, chapter one is a short one paragraph chapter.
It's funny that since I read Cruddy, I cannot stop copping her writing style, even though it's unintentional.
I will go back for a second read once I force myself to forget enough of it. A great thing about the story is the surprise brutality and pop-up darkness that just keeps coming.
Our girl, the human tumble weed, Miss Roberta Rohbeson is my newest anti-hero/reluctant vigilante. She is the antidote to our popular culture diet of poison femme fatales who have been put up there on screens and inside books recently for us to either lust over, idolize or vacillate between the two. Roberta is the person you wish was real so you yourself can give her what she honestly, finally needs. This heroine is clear of femininity and desirability. She moves through the pinball machine gauntlet like a soldier/crashtestdummy.
This could go on.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lynda Barry has an uncannily powerful oral voice, and her protagonist here, Roberta Rohbeson, is about as authentic a character as Barry has ever created. The story itself is brutal, violent, and grotesque, with Barry's nearly gothic illustrations adding a lyrical quality—it all adds up to a sort of twisted, corrupted coming-of-age story and one of her best-ever books—highly recommend to those who embrace the darker side of fiction.

[Anna Springer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Try this one back to back with Crime & Punishment. I think it's one of the smartest novels written. If you've spent life around a bunch of violence, deception, depression, and perverse pleasures that come in-between heartbreaking let-downs, you'll like it. Otherwise you'll think it's "over the top" or "depressing". Which means you're lucky, in some ways, and unlucky in others, but your therapy bills might be lower than those of us who think this is the Great American Novel.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

As dark as ... um ... the darkest dark thing you can think of.

And yet, one of my favorites. One of the few books I've read more than twice.

[Jake Beka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal, but I’ll be entirely honest, I’m not sure how to go about writing a review about it. The experience of reading this book, so far, might change as I read more books, has been the closest to the experience of watching the Harmony Korine film ‘Gummo,’ a movie that has stuck with me ever since I watched it because of its atmosphere, and this book will surely do the same. While there is a plot, I mean, if you could even call it a plot, that’s not what is important; the atmosphere is what is. I’m also so glad I read this book now because it has been highly influential in regards to my own creative writing, and specifically, the novel I am currently working on. Lynda’s writing style is fast paced and engaging but she always makes sure to stay long enough on each topic, theme, tone, etc. cannot recommend this enough.