Oh, be honest — we all do it.
A cute stranger on the bus who bumps shoulders with us as they find their seat; a class crush, who sometimes shares in our furtive, secretive glances during lecture; an old flame, who we haven’t seen in years but still think back on fondly, wondering if something could have been different, or if they still sometimes think of us, too. It’s practically human nature: to daydream, to imagine futures that haven’t happened yet and likely never will, to rewrite the past and create a better, happier ending for ourselves. The fleeting fantasies we create to fill the world around us — familial, platonic or, as so often is the case, romantic — are nothing to be ashamed of, no matter how far-off or unrealistic they may seem.
Well … maybe I should amend my statement. They’re almost never something to be ashamed of. Yet perhaps in the case of Alice, the protagonist of debut novelist Emma van Straaten’s “Creep: A Love Story,” shame is a term she should consider reacquainting herself with. (Ideally alongside others like “personal space,” “boundaries” and “restraining order.”) But who am I to judge?
With a full title like “Creep: A Love Story,” you know you’re in for a ride before you’ve even turned the first page. Following a 20-something Londoner searching for purpose in a life devoid of direction, identity and community, we begin the story with what feels, at the time, like the entire truth of Alice’s delusion laid bare before us:
“You think you know what love is, I imagine, but you don’t. … Love is this: when it is your greatest desire to slice open His chest and crawl inside Him to rest. A compulsion to drink his blood, great copper gulps of it, to press yourself to Him, limb to limb, palm to palm, so that you might be absorbed. Burrowing inside His bones, becoming His very marrow. It is disappearing entirely into Him. This is the way I love Him, and the way He must surely love me.”
Thus reads the first paragraph of Alice’s story and also probably the most normal. The deified “Him” in question is Tom, a man with whom, the back cover totes, Alice shares the mundanities of domestic life, including — but God, certainly not limited to — an apartment, a bed and even, devastatingly, a toothbrush. Only, Tom and Alice have never actually spoken to each other — for the past year, Alice has cleaned Tom’s apartment once a week, their only interactions a service rendered and a payment fulfilled, all communication limited to the cleaning app they initially connected through.
Their lack of contact means little to Alice, though. She knows Tom loves her. He just might not know it yet. And really, that’s no problem at all — she just needs to talk to Him, and He’ll know they’re meant for each other. Their happy future seems inevitable. But as Alice schemes the perfect meet-cute to finally bring her fantasies to life, her plans begin to crumble around her, forcing Alice to reckon with a reality that rips Tom — and herself — out of the happy ending she’s already written for them.
Told in a fluid, unflinchingly honest voice, “Creep” is nothing short of horrifying, placing the reader directly into the mind of the obsessed and keeping it there as it slowly turns up the heat. There, we feel every sensation taking grip, guiding the story in increasingly erratic and unpredictable directions. It works wonderfully as a paperback thriller, full of the familiar brand of shocking, unsettling moments that characterize the genre. Yet it’s in looking at this story further, as a tale of obsession and love, repulsion and self-loathing, that one gains a richer experience — one that, at its core, I believe all of us can relate to in some capacity. Because sure, we may not all be Alice now, but I’m willing to bet that we have all felt like her at some point.
At its core, “Creep” is the story of a woman who wants, desperately, to be loved. By Tom, yes, but also by her mother, by her sister, by her coworkers and her old classmates and the stranger who sits next to her on the bus. By anyone, really. And still, more than she craves to be loved by anyone else, she yearns desperately for permission to love herself. Her obsession with Tom ultimately stems not from anything he has said or done that makes him particularly special, but her unflinching commitment to proving that he can somehow make her special in the way she believes him to be:
“O, believe me when I say Tom is mine, and when we are together I will be complete and shiningly whole, my immensity and ugliness dimmed by His brilliance, and it will be perfect and I will be happy.”
This belief that love can heal something inherently broken inside of us is a relatable sentiment in and of itself. Just think of how many stories hinge on true love’s kiss; we are told over and over again in the media we consume that not only is love the only thing worth living for, but also that our life is only worth living if we are loved. And all too often, this desired love must come from a man to truly “count.” For anyone who has grappled with a desire for “male validation,” the feeling Alice expresses here — that a man’s love will somehow make her, in one motion, beautiful and happy and complete — is a familiar one.
As Alice spirals deeper into her obsession the narrative pulls us down with her, speaking to a larger issue we rarely confront when it comes to love: There’s never been so much of a problem with thinking “I can fix him” as with “he can fix me.” Alice’s obsession isn’t just about the ability for a man’s love to heal us, but about the power of bargains in general, about wishing so desperately to change ourselves that we are willing to make any kind of deal to get what we want:
“I think of the desperate prayers of my youth, palms pressed, eyes closed, the ferocious, juvenile wishes and bargains – if I shut my eyes for the length of this song – let me be thin – if the next car that passes is black – let him like me – if I hold my breath for as long as it takes for that magpie to fly from this telephone wire to the next – let them all forget – if I scratch at this place on my thigh until it bleeds without stopping – please – please – let me be different.”
Ultimately, Alice’s obsession with Tom is nothing but another kind of bargain. If Alice can somehow deceive someone as “perfect” as Tom into loving her — a task she knows at heart is impossible, because otherwise she wouldn’t have made this bargain in the first place — she will be able to prove to herself that she is worthy of being loved at all.
Throughout the story, Alice is given numerous opportunities to see this bargain for what it is. Even if she somehow got Tom in the end, she would still be unhappy with herself. Yet time and again, she ignores the reality of her situation for the fantasy she has created. A particularly notable example of this lies in the relationship she takes up with a man named James, who she is introduced to through a coworker. When this coworker first mentions setting the pair up, Alice dismisses her, sure that her relationship with Tom is fated. Finally, though, after no new success with meeting Tom, Alice agrees to give James a try instead. During each of their subsequent dates, Alice admits that things seem to be going well with James, yet she continues to dismiss her real relationship with James as “practice” for her eventual relationship with Tom.
The reader continues rooting for Alice to realize what she has right in front of her, only to be hit with the impossibility of such a thing when they realize that, apart from Tom, every man Alice’s age is named either James or Jamie: James, her roommate’s friend; James, her coworker’s fiancé; James Barrett and Jamie Gardner, two boys she went to school with. While a small detail on its own, it emphasizes just how little regard Alice actually has for James or their relationship. In her mind, he is simply another of the bunch, no one special or worthy of her true attention — he could have been anyone, and he still would have only been practice for the “real thing.”
What Alice refuses to acknowledge is that Tom, underneath it all, is just another James. Instead, she selects Tom out of the bunch, decides he is special because he is unattainable and uses this as an excuse to turn away from any real love (or reality checks) she encounters. What makes this story so heartbreaking isn’t Alice’s delusional obsession with Tom. Rather, it’s that Alice truly believes her imagined love is somehow more pure simply because it is out of reach. Deep down, she thinks that if she can trick her way into this kind of love, then she must deserve it. Only then can she love herself too, flaws and mistakes and all. Even as she at last sees the truth of what she’s lost in pursuing this obsession, she turns away from it, back to the comfort of her fantasy:
“Perhaps normal is what I’ve needed, like in a coming-of-age movie, the hands of James, the kind words of strangers, nudging me to the inevitable, cutesy conclusion: love thyself? I laugh aloud at this ridiculous notion. I, I could never do this but I am still sure, as my heart beats painfully, that Tom, Tom could.”
In this way, “Creep” establishes itself as not just another literary thriller with an obsessive woman at its core, but also as its own kind of love letter to those who feel like something about them is inherently unlovable — something that can only be fixed with a “cure” that moves further and further away the closer you get to catching it. Something you would make just about any bargain to change.
Alice’s obsession is intense, yes, and she definitely takes it too far — but, in a way I find hard to admit, it’s also incredibly relatable. Because it’s an ugly truth, but a truth nonetheless. And maybe you’ve never staked so much of your self-worth on receiving a man’s love before, but how many of us have made different kinds of bargains? How many of us have convinced ourselves that we can only be happy if we reach, and then maintain, and then surpass unattainable goals? How many of us have sent silent pleas out into the universe, praying to whatever may be listening that we could be different, better, more?
So no, we certainly aren’t all Alices, and we certainly aren’t all chasing after unattainable Toms (God, what a world that would be). But when it comes to experiencing the feelings that drive Alice to be so, well … herself — let’s be honest with ourselves. We all do it.
Daily Arts Writer Camille Nagy can be reached at camnagy@umich.edu.
