Published in 2025 (first published 2024)
211 pages
Emma van Straaten is a writer of British Mauritian heritage living in London with her husband and two children. In 2021, she won the inaugural Women’s Prize Discoveries Award with an early partial draft of her debut novel, which is about a young woman who becomes obsessed by the man whose flat she cleans. Described as “a chilling book by an exciting new voice” by Vogue, it explores issues of class, race, gender, body image and shame. This is her first novel; it is published in the UK under the title This Immaculate Body, and in the USA as Creep: A Love Story.
What is this book about?
‘an impeccable debut from a rising talent’ Alice Slater
‘transgressive, with an ending that gave me whiplash’ Kirsty Capes
‘deserves immediate cult status’ Dazed
‘Baby Reindeer meets Convenience Store Woman‘ Kirsty Logan
Alice has been cleaning Tom’s flat every Wednesday for a year. With every smudge wiped from his coffee cup, every crease smoothed out in his bed, every multivitamin counted from the jar, Alice spirals deeper into infatuation. But as Alice prepares for the moment when they will finally meet face-to-face, she discovers that love might not be the cure she thought it was.
This Immaculate Body is a story of obsession, of the way women view the world and the ways that the world views them. As Alice frantically tries to cling to an imagined future with Tom, the line between fantasy and reality become ever more blurred, putting everything she has dreamed of at risk.
