{"id":2545,"date":"2025-08-31T21:49:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T21:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/08\/31\/redefining-obsession-in-creep-a-love-story\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T21:49:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T21:49:14","slug":"redefining-obsession-in-creep-a-love-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/08\/31\/redefining-obsession-in-creep-a-love-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Redefining obsession in \u2018Creep: A Love Story\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Oh, be honest \u2014 we all do it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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\u2019s practically human nature: to daydream, to imagine futures that haven\u2019t 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 \u2014 familial, platonic or, as so often is the case, romantic \u2014 are nothing to be ashamed of, no matter how far-off or unrealistic they may seem.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Well \u2026 maybe I should amend my statement. They\u2019re <em>almost<\/em> never something to be ashamed of. Yet perhaps in the case of Alice, the protagonist of debut novelist Emma van Straaten\u2019s \u201cCreep: A Love Story,\u201d shame is a term she should consider reacquainting herself with. (Ideally alongside others like \u201cpersonal space,\u201d \u201cboundaries\u201d and \u201crestraining order.\u201d) But who am I to judge?<\/p>\n<p>With a full title like \u201cCreep: A Love Story,\u201d you know you\u2019re in for a ride before you\u2019ve 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\u2019s delusion laid bare before us:\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cYou think you know what love is, I imagine, but you don\u2019t. \u2026 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Thus reads the first paragraph of Alice\u2019s story and also probably the most normal. The deified \u201cHim\u201d in question is Tom, a man with whom, the back cover totes, Alice shares the mundanities of domestic life, including \u2014 but God, certainly not limited to \u2014 an apartment, a bed and even, devastatingly, a toothbrush. Only, Tom and Alice have never actually spoken to each other \u2014 for the past year, Alice has cleaned Tom\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Their lack of contact means little to Alice, though. She knows Tom loves her. <em>He<\/em> just might not know it yet. And really, that\u2019s no problem at all \u2014 she just needs to talk to Him, and He\u2019ll know<em> <\/em>they\u2019re 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 \u2014 and herself \u2014 out of the happy ending she\u2019s already written for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Told in a fluid, unflinchingly honest voice, \u201cCreep\u201d 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\u2019s in looking at this story further, as a tale of obsession and love, repulsion and self-loathing, that one gains a richer experience \u2014 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\u2019m willing to bet that we have all felt like her at some point.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At its core, \u201cCreep\u201d 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 <em>herself<\/em>. 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 <em>her<\/em> special in the way she believes him to be:<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cO, 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.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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 \u201ccount.\u201d For anyone who has grappled with a desire for \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.uccuniversityexpress.com\/latestissue\/my-complicated-relationship-with-male-validation\">male validation<\/a>,\u201d the feeling Alice expresses here \u2014 that a man\u2019s love will somehow make her, in one motion, beautiful and happy and complete \u2014 is a familiar one.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s never been so much of a problem with thinking \u201cI can fix him\u201d as with \u201c<em>he<\/em> can fix <em>me<\/em>.\u201d Alice\u2019s obsession isn\u2019t just about the ability for a man\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think of the desperate prayers of my youth, palms pressed, eyes closed, the ferocious, juvenile wishes and bargains \u2013 if I shut my eyes for the length of this song \u2013 let me be thin \u2013 if the next car that passes is black \u2013 let him like me \u2013 if I hold my breath for as long as it takes for that magpie to fly from this telephone wire to the next \u2013 let them all forget \u2013 if I scratch at this place on my thigh until it bleeds without stopping \u2013 please \u2013 please \u2013 let me be different.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, Alice\u2019s obsession with Tom is nothing but another kind of bargain. If Alice can somehow deceive someone as \u201cperfect\u201d as Tom into loving her \u2014 a task she knows at heart is impossible, because otherwise she wouldn\u2019t have made this bargain in the first place \u2014 she will be able to prove to herself that she is worthy of being loved at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>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 \u201cpractice\u201d for her eventual relationship with Tom.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s age is named either James or Jamie: James, her roommate\u2019s friend; James, her coworker\u2019s fianc\u00e9; 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 \u2014 he could have been anyone, and he still would have only been practice for the \u201creal thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t Alice\u2019s delusional obsession with Tom. Rather, it\u2019s 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\u2019s lost in pursuing this obsession, she turns away from it, back to the comfort of her fantasy:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerhaps normal is what I\u2019ve 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In this way, \u201cCreep\u201d 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 \u2014 something that can only be fixed with a \u201ccure\u201d that moves further and further away the closer you get to catching it. Something you would make just about any bargain to change.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-4    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Alice\u2019s obsession is intense, yes, and she definitely takes it too far \u2014 but, in a way I find hard to admit, it\u2019s also incredibly relatable. Because it\u2019s an ugly truth, but a truth nonetheless. And maybe you\u2019ve never staked so much of your self-worth on receiving a man\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n<p>So no, we certainly aren\u2019t all Alices, and we certainly aren\u2019t 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 \u2026 herself \u2014 let\u2019s be honest with ourselves. We all do it.<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Arts Writer Camille Nagy can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/b-side\/am-i-a-creep-too\/mailto:camnagy@umich.edu\"><em>camnagy@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh, be honest \u2014 we all do it.\u00a0 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\u2019t seen in years but still think back on fondly, wondering if something [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[2751,1002,2700,2750,449],"class_list":{"0":"post-2545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-creep","9":"tag-love","10":"tag-obsession","11":"tag-redefining","12":"tag-story"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2547,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545\/revisions\/2547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}