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| ★★★★✰ |
Synopsis: Creepy is a boy who watches from the shadows keenly observing and caustically commentating on human folly. Maud is less certain. A confused girl with a condition that embarrasses her parents and assures her isolation.Together Creepy and Maud discover something outside their own vulnerability — each other’s. But life is arbitrary; and loving someone doesn’t mean you can save them. Creepy & Maud is a blackly funny and moving first novel that says; ‘You’re ok to be as screwed up as you think you are and you’re not alone in that.’
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Review: This is one of those books I had been dying to read for ages, after spotting it on Goodreads, but hardcopies are suprisingly expensive (as is the Kindle version). Eventually I caved and purchased the Kindle version. The problem with these elusive books is that I get a little bit too hyped up about how awesome they're going to be (as if expense and rarity is actually an indicator of quality) and I put too much pressure on them to meet my great expectations.
To be fair to this one, it did a great job. It reads kind of like a Young Adult novel, boy 'meets' girl through his bedroom window, boy kinda obsesses a little about girl, girl becomes gradually intrigued by boy. But this is quite a lot darker than your average YA novel, and is quite thought-provoking in a fairly unconventional way. Maud has an unusual condition that seems to embarrass her parents, and her condition is not the focus of the novel, but how she deals with it and how other people (mostly, her parents) treat her as a result is. Seeing her home life, quite literally, from the outside, through Creepy's eyes, depicts a very lonely and misunderstood girl. Creepy himself is clearly an intelligent, pensive young man with occasionally quite dark or disturbing thoughts, and his own parents are not the epitome of perfection either, so this book illustrates quite an unusual context where two relatively messed up kids find a little bit of relief, if not hope, from their daily lives in their strange window-to-window communication. Both kids have quite a cynical view of the world, and there is a sense of despondent acceptance that their is nothing they can do about their lots in life - except choose to share them with each other.
I would definitely recommend this book, but I'd be reluctant to fork out a lot of money for it. Worth keeping an eye out for at a reasonable price.
Rating: 4/5
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