CRUDDY: An Illustrated Novel
by Lynda Barry
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Read in June, 2005
recommended to megan by:
Erin Finnegan, thanks a lot.
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...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Anyone with a strong stomach
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 i...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
recommends it for:
spazzes, burn-outs, knife people
I've loved Lynda Barry for a long time and Cruddy is a real departure from her illustrated comics whichh are often delightful. However, Cruddy is dark and sinister but still tinged with Barry's signature humor and sympathy -- often for outcast adolsecents. The book sometimes reads like a fever dream with its wild descriptions and events, but overall it is terribly engrossing as well as funny,disturbing, outrageous, and sad.
The book is first-person account of 15-year-old Roberta Rohbeson wh...more
The book is first-person account of 15-year-old Roberta Rohbeson wh...more
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I actually read this a few years ago but recently scored a copy at the “May-retta” Book Nook. If this novel were ever to be made into a film, the director would have to be Larry Clark. It is a coming of age/loss of innocence tale set in the unsupervised 70’s. A self-conscious teenage girl, despising her hometown and school, meets a series of uncanny freaks and gets into trouble with them. Luckily, her Dad shows up to take her on a roadtrip and away from the town’s mischief. The only prob...more
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Read in January, 2002
recommends it for:
the teenage girl in you*
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, ...more
sad? yes. but she makes it so funny, too, in spite of all the acid-tripping, ...more
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recommends it for:
Everyone
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 ...more
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 ...more
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Read in January, 2008
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 n...more
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Read in December, 2001
recommends it for:
people who have taken acid before
i wanted to add this because it's a heavy emotional touchstone for me. it is about a poor girl who had an *extremely weird* kidnapping experience when she was 11. the book takes place when she is in high school, cutting class, taking acid and hanging out for the first time with her friend vicky talluso. the trip causes her to "re-live" the violent experience she had when she was eleven, in her own voice. there are even these crazy illustrations, though it's not a comic book.
i ...more
i ...more
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I was drawn to this drawing while sifting through discounted books at a tucked-away outlet warehouse sort of place...fully the most depressing atmosphere to house literature. The florescent light shone upon a face and I was intrigued. Somewhat repulsed, but still strongly drawn to the image.
Reading the book the first time mirrored the same experience. With every reading I find something different.
Its a strange, wonderful book that can be depressing and off putting if read in a certain ligh...more
Reading the book the first time mirrored the same experience. With every reading I find something different.
Its a strange, wonderful book that can be depressing and off putting if read in a certain ligh...more
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Read in April, 2008
recommended to Rhiannon by:
J
Barry's prose is remarkable. She has a wicked way with words. This book will take you to a very dark place. Back to when you were a 15yr old doing acid, and had to be very careful to control your thoughts, so the world wouldn't turn into a three headed monster. Cruddy reminded me of "JT Leroy's" Sarah in its construction of a dark fantastical and magical world where the grotesque smells, textures and visuals linger far after you leave the text behind. The father character is a characte...more
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I think Ms. Barry has a great novel in her yet (and she may well have already written it and I just haven't heard of it yet), but I don't feel as though this is the best she can do. Her cartoons, for which no adjectives glow quite enough, do not want for the types of heartbreaking and occasionally frightening situations that set "Cruddy" in queasy motion, but perhaps the darkly goofy innocence of the illustrations that accompany them effectively diffuse the tragedies just enough, to t...more
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Read in January, 2006
Not for the weak of stomach. I respect Barry, but this book teeters on the edge of nihilism -- it does everything possible to make us actually grateful/relieved that the protagonist is about to commit suicide (not a spoiler: we're told this at the outset) . . . The world of this novel is such a Gnostically horrible, loveless, pitiless place that it invites us to flee. The only real saving graces here are a.) an occasional piercing beauty to the writing and b.) the fact that we can't manage to ...more
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Read in March, 2008
This books is quite dark and depressing but with some humorous dialogue. Very drug driven....about a particularly ugly girl who isn't wanted by her mother, and whose father addresses her as a boy. Very abused, very jaded. It was a good, quick read but not written with particularly intelligent prose, as it is through a young girl that isn't particularly well off. It's mostly written like a diary, with flashbacks between current time and her life story she's threading throughout the book.
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Read in January, 2000
recommends it for:
People who were raised in trailers
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,
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Cruddy's language will get stuck in your head for weeks after you finished reading it (which only takes a couple days). It's good language. It's good story too. Captivating, astonishing, heart-breaking, and funny as hell. I keep an extra copy for loaning out, if anyone wants to borrow it, who will also promise to give it back so that I can continue being the missionary for Cruddy.
Beware RSUN -- the Rising Stab of the Unfelt Needle!
Beware RSUN -- the Rising Stab of the Unfelt Needle!
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Becky loaned this to me years ago, and I loved it so much I had to go and buy another copy the following year when I needed to read it again. That need continues to return every now and then. It's a rare book that can be this bleak, this dark, yet still retain a core of hopefulness, triumph, and just enough dark humor to balance everything out. Both brutally heartbreaking, and just plain brutal, one of my all time favorites.
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The great american novel.
Love, drugs, knives, road tripping, abuse, dirt, flies, genderbending, trains, and geography as identity...'sall there. And the whole thing is so enveloping that reading it puts me in a strange semi-intoxicated fugue, in which the narrator seems to be the most sensible, reasonable human ever invented. Despite murder, despite acid, despite suicide. It all makes a harsh and lovely kind of sense.
Love, drugs, knives, road tripping, abuse, dirt, flies, genderbending, trains, and geography as identity...'sall there. And the whole thing is so enveloping that reading it puts me in a strange semi-intoxicated fugue, in which the narrator seems to be the most sensible, reasonable human ever invented. Despite murder, despite acid, despite suicide. It all makes a harsh and lovely kind of sense.
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I love Lynda Barry (One Hundred Demons is in my Top 10), but this one was too dark for me. After I read it, I heard that it was supposed to be a funny book. Funny?! I don't get how a child being subjected to such confusion is funny. Acid trips? Knife threats? Twisted father? Maybe if I reread it knowing that it's supposed to be funny, I might see it--but I wouldn't let go of the other adjectives: sad and scary.
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Read in October, 2007
I would've given it five stars, but I think I'm too sheltered to really immerse myself in the lifestyle that is embodied in this book. I enjoyed it, am in awe of it, and am completely disturbed by it. I found it difficult to keep the characters straight in a few sections, but we'll just say that's due to my reading it on the train, and not the fact that I am an imbecile.
All in all, good book! I say read it.
All in all, good book! I say read it.
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lynda barry's style is definitely well-honed to an art. Cruddy perfectly manages to articulate that awkward halfway-to-nowhere feeling. a mismatched teenager acid-tripping recalls some truly sick and bizarre shit.
i love that bit about her being kept awake at night, terrified of the glow-in-the-dark jesus, and wondering about who else she could pray to if she was already afraid of the glow-in-the-dark jesus.
i love that bit about her being kept awake at night, terrified of the glow-in-the-dark jesus, and wondering about who else she could pray to if she was already afraid of the glow-in-the-dark jesus.
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