Barry, Lynda. Cruddy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Lynda Barry is the lady behind the comic "Ernie Pook's Comeek" featuring Marlys and the beat-poet poodle Fred Milton. I came across this book in an otherwise forgettable interview with Kelly Link on Bat Segundo (does anyone else think he asks paltry questions about nothing interesting? i've only heard the K. Link one...I think my Internet-audio author-interview jones is so thoroughly fulfilled by M. Silverblatt over at Bookworm that I have trouble taking anyone else as seriously), and in fact while listening to the interview I surfed over to AbeBooks.com and bought the thing right away, only because Kelly Link said, in response to something or other, "But what about Lynda Barry's novel, Cruddy? I love that book."

What Link loves is a book about a young girl named Roberta who is ugly and looks like a boy, to the point where her father, called "the father" calls her Clyde and treats her like his only son. There's a kind of old-fashioned treasure-hunt plotline to this story, replete with maps, but what I think makes the novel fascinating is everything it has to say and show about knives. The father comes from a line of butchers and so he's very good with knives and very fetishistically in love with knives, to the point where he gives them all lady names. Little Debbie is like the star of knives in this book.

An analogy— Cruddy : Knives :: Kill Bill : Swords

I hate knives. I'd probably be much more comfortable holding a loaded gun than a supersharp knife. There's something simply unbearable about slicing. But anyway, it turns out Roberta/Clyde is a bit of a natural with knives. She has it in her blood, is the refrain. And throughout the novel she slices up a good number of people. The father does, too. And then there's also the fact that she has a very acute death wish, strongly connected with dodging trains. And so, knowing me, you'd think, Man, what an awful book, all dark and Nineties, surely Dusty's gonna hate it.

I thought so too, but if you know Barry's work, you know that she captures life on the "wrong side of the tracks" with a precise youthful melancholy, mixed with a kind of hope and natural wonder, that makes one fall easily in love with all her characters. I loved watching Roberta attack with Little Debbie. It was like her one defense against all the bad she had to run into, and it's such a good defense.

Plus it's a novel with illustrations, and that makes it better than most books without.