April 4th, 2009
“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…”
The book starts off with a suicide note, asking the reader to not blame the drugs.
Cruddy by Lynda Barry is a fictional story about a girl named Roberta. Five years prior, Roberta was found wandering the desert covered in blood, holding her dog, Cookie. She was the only survivor from what the newspapers declared “The Lucky Chief Motel Massacre”. She has never spoken about what happened there.
Now sixteen years old, Roberta lives with her mom and sister on the aforementioned cruddy street in the cruddy town. She has had her first experiment with drugs, and it is a whopper. She meets some interesting people, who are also what you would call “misfits”. The book jumps back and forth between her intoxicated journey with these kids, and the blood filled adventure she went on with her father five years ago.
I found it a bit hard to grasp at first, but as I continued on, the story reeled me in more and more, until I had to stay up the rest of the night to finish the book.