<![CDATA[Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel]]>

false <![CDATA[Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167958868m/29015.jpg 29015 8 Lynda Barry's illustrated novel Cruddy has not one but three equally alarming openings. The first is a suicide note: "Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs." The next is a description of the lurid crucifix that hangs over the narrator's bed: "Some nights looking at him scares me so bad I can hardly move and I start doing a prayer for protection. But when the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?" The third is worthy of a nightmare fairytale, beginning "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..." She's not exaggerating. It's 1971, and 16-year-old Roberta Rohbeson lives in what looks very much like hell. It's five years after the Lucky Chief Motel Massacre, after which Roberta was found wandering the desert, covered with blood and clutching her dog, Cookie, who suffers from "incurable skin problems." Even now, Roberta still won't talk about what happened. She lives with her mother and sister on the aforementioned cruddy street, hides in the weeds during her lunch period, and eventually befriends some suicidal misfits like herself. The novel intercuts their chemically enhanced adventures with scenes from a gore-filled road trip taken five years before. Hint No. 1: Roberta's father used to run a slaughterhouse. Hint No. 2: The maps inside the front covers have keys that read "Dead People We Left Behind" and "Places There Were Blood." Barry came to fame as a cartoonist, and though the humor in her strip Ernie Pook's Comeek is dark, nothing in it could prepare her fans for the sheer horror of Cruddy. The novel is funny, sort of, as long as you think naming a knife Little Debbie is funny, or lines like "A man who has been dead for a week in a hot trailer looks more like a man than you would first expect." What's more, it's compulsively, almost harrowingly, readable, written with the kind of velocity that makes you keep turning pages even when you don't want to. Despite the hallucinogenic quality of the violence around her, Roberta is never anything less than real, and her story will strike chords in anyone whose childhood was marked by ugliness and fear. Cruddy may be a bad acid trip, but if you can stomach the ride, it's a very good book. --Mary Park 1170873 1999 Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel total:1723|5:778|4:602|3:262|2:68|1:13| 1723 7233 2298 296 4 8 false false Tue Jun 05 23:49:32 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 05 23:56:41 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 4 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 16 11:01:13 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 21 13:09:17 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 5 true false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 02 22:29:05 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 02 22:40:25 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 16 11:31:35 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 21 06:52:43 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Jul 29 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 03 07:12:48 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 03 07:54:59 -0700 2008
It's a tale of adolescent d...more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2005 Fri Jan 11 00:27:04 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 11 00:27:04 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 4 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Thu Feb 08 20:23:42 -0800 2007 Tue Feb 27 08:29:23 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jun 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 04 08:01:26 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 04 08:13:55 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 0 false false Sun Apr 19 22:17:43 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 19 22:17:43 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 2 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Tue Dec 25 13:52:03 -0800 2007 Wed Dec 26 10:30:11 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 4 false false Tue Aug 04 12:05:22 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 04 19:12:50 -0700 2009
EXCERPT:
"When we first moved he...more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Sat Aug 25 01:46:53 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 25 01:46:53 -0700 2007 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. ]]> 5 1 false false Mon Sep 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 08:14:48 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 20:10:42 -0700 2009
The sto...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 09:06:46 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 09:14:59 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jun 15 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed May 28 18:48:43 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 16 00:01:41 -0700 2008 Geek Love, but it's much darker. It's an illustrated, psychedelic horror-adventure story that half takes place over a couple of days in the lives of some crazy teenagers in a "white trashy" sort of town. Another story is embedded within this one, and it's...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed May 28 16:24:08 -0700 2008 Sat May 31 12:02:38 -0700 2008
...more...]]> 4 0 true false Sun Dec 30 12:55:35 -0800 2007 Tue Jan 08 06:06:29 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jul 13 19:16:46 -0700 2007 Fri Jul 13 19:16:48 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Fri Jun 08 12:11:51 -0700 2007 Fri Jun 08 12:12:06 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Thu Oct 01 14:32:05 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 01 14:32:05 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=29015