In This Immaculate Body, we are taken on a haunting and deeply unsettling journey through the thoughts of Alice, a cleaner obsessed with a man named Tom ( the man whose flat she cleans once a week) Even though they’ve never met, Alice becomes convinced they’re destined to be together. Trust me when I tell you that you’ll find yourself torn between sympathy for Alice’s pain and horror at her choices!

This book is not for the faint-hearted, but it’s one you won’t forget.

Alice adores Tom. She cleans his flat, makes his bed, tops up his pickle jar. She'd do anything for him. Only problem is - she hasn't actually met him yet.

With a strong voice and unreliable narrator, this novel is gripping from the first word. We are drawn deeper and deeper into Alice's inftuation with her, as yet unmet, employer. We roll in his bed together, we sip his wine, we taste his food - and ingest his bodily substances. Alice's obsession can only end one way. We know it but she doesn't. Even what she does know, she refuses to believe.

A stunning portrayal of self-delusion, self-hatred and self-harm, this is not a book for the faint-hearted. It is, however, well-worth a read.

Excellent.

this novel is so consistent in its tone and style, which is hard to do over such a long story. the gradually unravelling mysteries of the narrator's past were, in my opinion, well paced and convincing. ultimately, though, i just found this book too static to engage me. other than the narrator, there aren't any real characters, and even as she's pushed away from the object of her obsession, she doesn't ever change or learn. it's like she's stuck in one moment, but this unfortunately made for a really slow read. it's a shame, but when the narrator is this unpleasant, i think it takes a really strong plot to keep readers, and this wasn't enough for me to invest.

There seems to be a spate of novels where the protagonist is someone with deep character flaws - extreme neediness, an inflated ego alongside cripplingly low self-esteem, not ti mention the huge chip on the shoulder. This Immaculate Body is one of the darker ones.

Alice is a young woman who doesn't particularly like herself and doesn't believe others like her either. She proves this to herself by pushing people away before they do it to her - this includes her family.

Alongside this she has developed a very vivid fantasy that the man she cleans for simply needs to meet her and he will realise she is the girl of his dreams.

As the story continues you realise that this unrequited love is somewhat more disturbing and delusional than you were led to believe.

This book is dark and disturbing but believable. Emma Van Straaten has created a character in Alice that will be hard to forget. Nothing is quite as it seems throughout the book. I found it hard to put down. Another wonderful debut novel from a writer I hope to hear more of in the future.

Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.

Alice cleans Tom's flat every Wednesday. Alice is in love with Tom although they have never met. Alice is totally obsessed with Tom. Sadly for me Alice is an unlikeable character that I struggled to connect with. I found it was quite a harrowing read to watch her mental health downward spiral. Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an early read.

I can’t believe this is a debut in all honesty beautifully written.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this early.

Alice took a job as a cleaner when she moved to London but since deciding on an office job instead, she’s dropped all but one of her clients. Tom. Who she is in love with. She basically spends all her time constructing this elaborate fantasy for their meeting and how he will fall in love with her too. Except she’s determined to make it a reality.

This kind of felt like two stories roughly sewn together. There’s a plot line with Alice’s family, particularly her sister Cass that while it does feed into things it also feels very separate? You are also expecting something pretty big to explain why Alice is Like That but I would say the inciting event does not quite warrant her extreme behaviour. Of course there is nuance around it but she’s pretty unhinged!

I think some people will really gel with this but didn’t hit the notes I was hoping for unfortunately.

I liked the premise of this book, and thought it was a good debut novel with an unsettling, unlikeable narrator - always the best ones!
However, I did struggle with the writer's style, particularly at the beginning; it felt unnecessarily
verbose and didn't hook me into the story and I needed a second attempt to get through the whole book.
Thank you to netgalley and Little Brown books for an advance copy of this book.

This Immaculate body by Emma van Straaten is heartbreaking, magical, and real. In her debut novel, van Straaten fuses parasocial fantasy, existential crisis, horror and thriller with such an exemplary display of narrative power, that you are shocked to know that this is her first book.

The premise of the book is simple — Alice is in love with Tom, a man whose house she cleans every Wednesday for a year. She is efficient and detailed — she not only cleans every smudge, but also counts the tablets in his vitamin bottle to see if he is taking them daily, peruses through his work emails, and check his weekly planner so she can engineer a ‘meet cute’.

From then on, it is a voyeuristic descent into what is a dark obsessive journey which culminates unsuccessfully in a ‘meet cute’ where Alice realises that only love is not enough, and takes a plunge into a grief-filled abyss deepened by heartbreaking confusion and rejection, prompting you to empathise with her.

Alice is morally ambiguous, you don’t know how much of her truths are lies but, van Straaten writes her with such vulnerability, that you are almost inclined to forgo her evil machinations. The author’s world building and backstory of Alice are extraordinary, with mind-blowing dreamscapes, which push the narrative further, matched only by characters who seem as unaware of the operatic web of lies that Alice weaves.

A complicated morality tale with plenty of operatic intrigue, strong young characters and skin-crawling atmosphere created by van Straaten through Alice’s very open obsessive train of thought obfuscating everything to serve only her, makes this debut novel succeed on all counts.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

Great storytelling that will leave the reader unsettled. Some edge of the seat moments throughout. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy

Emma van Straaten was the winner of the inaugural Women’s Prize/Curtis Brown Agency Discoveries Award for the first 10,000 pages of her work-in-progress novel then provisionally titled Heartstring and whose genesis she described as follows:

"When I first moved to London, I became a casual cleaner for a couple who lived in the same block of flats as me. I'd advertised in the communal post-room, and after a five-minute interview with Sarah, was hired to pop round twice a week. They left cash on the counter, and communicated by the odd note, so I never saw her again, and never met her husband at all. Arriving often minutes after they'd left for work, it wasn't long before I felt I knew them. Their surroundings seemed to give me clues as to their personalities and I grew oddly fond of them. I began making all sort of involuntary judgements and assumptions from this strangely intimate relationship I had with their belongings, as I washed up their breakfast bowls, straightened the books on their bedside tables and folded their clothes. They eventually moved away (which I’d known would happen because of the twelve-week pregnancy scan that appeared on their corkboard and the subsequent estate agent brochures spread on their kitchen counter), but the experience stayed with me. Several years later, I signed up for an evening creative writing course for which I wrote a short story, drawing on this uneasy knowingness. My classmates found my depiction of an obsessive cleaner who blindly loves the inhabitant of a flat she cleans unsettling. I wanted her story told more fully, her fixation made more frightening, so I started writing Heartstring."

On the week she was told she was the winner she had her first child which did slow down the completion process, but things did proceed (the final edits to the book were made just ahead of the due date of her second child) and now the novel is due for publication in early 2025 – although renamed “This Immaculate Body” in the UK and “Creep” in the US (overall I am not sure any of the three titles quite works although the UK one is a lot more striking).

The book fits very firmly in the unlikeable female genre (complete with the usual unfiltered – and here slightly unhinged – behaviour and deliberate gross out obsessions with bodily fluids) – a kind of Moshfegh/Cottrell mash up although thankfully set in the UK which made it a little more relatable (and added Oliphant-esque shades).

The narrator Alice is part English/part Asian (the author is part Mauritian) and has an older sister Cass: once both inseparable and often mistaken for twins they have diverged over the years in education and career (Cass – Law at Oxford, Magic Circle Law Firm; Alice – English Lit from which she dropped out, initially gig-work as a cleaner, then as a clerical paralegal), friendship (the unravelling of their closeness emerging gradually over time) and body image (Cass glamorous, Alice binge-obsessed).

During Alice’s abortive cleaning gigs she becomes obsessed with one client – Tom – and retains him even while office-working (excusing her once a month hourly clean as a therapy session) and is convinced that he is equally desirous of her (or at least will be if she can engineer the right opportunity).

Most of the novel follows her on her obsession – her regular sweeps of his flat, trying his food and toiletries (many of which she then starts eating/using herself), stealing away small items including monitoring his email on his (rather unbelievably – but this is not a book which exactly attempts to major on credibility of plot or character) unprotected laptop, her attempts to engineer encounters meetings (knowing what she does of his itinerary), lengthy volunteering at a nursing home where she first grooms and then infects one of Tom’s relatives so she can be present when he visits, sabotaging his relationship with his girlfriend, all culminating in her gate-crashing a family trip to Paris to celebrate his mother’s birthday – all of course with predictably disastrous consequences.

At the same time, she treats what seems to be a potentially promising relationship set up by a colleague as little more than an inconvenient smokescreen and ignores her sister’s attempt at contact.

The book has some distinctive quirks: her nursing home visit ends with a patient dying and she thereafter continually reimagines in her head the explanation for this death. And early on we learn that one of her colleagues is engaged to someone whose names Alice “cannot summon the energy to remember. Its probably James. Let’s be honest. It always is, every man my age is called James and if they aren’t they might as well be” and thereafter every male character is a James (I counted at least six).

To be honest I think the novel would have worked better with even more of these quirks/repeat jokes– as it was the humour and pacing in the book (and clear quality of writing) which made it one of the least unlikeable of a genre that really does not work that well for me.

I suspect this book will be a big hit in 2025 and I would not be surprised to see a Women’s Prize longlisting.

This book was incredibly unsettling, I loved it! It was well written, delving into the thoughts of Alice, our main character and her obsession with Tom, a man who's flat she cleans. I felt like it was a bit slow to start, but before I knew it I was hooked and couldn't put the book down.

I've not read many books with an unreliable narrator but this has encouraged me to look at more. Some of her actions are awful but honestly I felt like I KNEW Alice and I really wanted to help her.

I loved the descriptive writing style. I'm looking forward to seeing what this author does next!

This was the last book I read of the year and instantly made my top 10.
It was so original that I kept thinking I’d read something similar before but was wracking my brains to think what it was.
I love a dark book about obsessive relationships and unhinged messy women so this was a real wheelhouse for me.
Everything in this book is gross and fun and unintentionally funny. I loved it.

5 stars.

I really enjoyed 'This Immaculate Body', even though I was completely freaked out that it all starts with a cleaning job! I read some parts as one would watch something peeking through their fingers, thinking, "No, she wouldn't do that," and she does!

Emma van Straaten writes a convincing, obsessive protagonist, and I look forward to reading more of her books.

Recommended read if you enjoyed 'Death of a Bookseller' by Alice Slater and/or 'Wetlands' by Charlotte Roche.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the advance copy.

Emma van Straaten manages to get across obsession in "This Immaculate Body" so well. Alice cleans for Him (Tom) every Wednesday. She is totally obsessed and tends his flat with love and imagines conversations between them and how she will win him over. As the book progresses you realise that her life is pretty much empty. She has a dull job but has managed to wangle Wednesday mornings so that she can clean His flat and she lives for Wednesdays. As the story moves on, she becomes more and more obsessed. From her perspective, she is just dedicating her love and devotion to Him but of course from other people's perspectives, her behaviour is deeply disturbing. A very uncomfortable read at times but well done for the author to convey this behaviour so well.

This is one of the most unsettling and darkly captivating books I’ve read in a long time. It follows a woman’s descent into a delusional obsession with a man whose house she cleans, and the story only gets darker as her mindset becomes more unhinged.

The protagonist is deeply flawed—she’s a pathological liar, manipulative, and outright cruel to those around her. She uses and mistreats everyone who cares about her, making her a character you love to hate. And yet, despite her awfulness, the writing draws you in so completely that you can’t look away.

This book pulls no punches. Some moments were so dark and disturbing that they were almost too much to bear, and I found myself struggling to reconcile some of the choices made by the protagonist. But that’s what makes it such a raw and eye-opening portrayal of mental illness. The author captures how delusion and obsession can take hold and spiral out of control, creating a horrifyingly realistic depiction of a fractured mind.

While the protagonist’s actions are nearly unforgivable at times, the excellent writing and deeply unsettling tone kept me hooked.

Easily a top 3 of the books I’ve read this year. Alice is one of the most solid and clear characters I’ve ever read, and for all of her flaws and crimes, Emma Van Straaten somehow makes you love her; a display of the author’s undeniable talent. This Immaculate Body is layered, thrilling, spectacularly-paced. It is impossible to put it down, while at the same time inevitable that this book will turn your stomach. I can’t wait for more from Van Straaten.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7083762647

What to say about short novel narrated by Alice, lonely, struggling with an eating disorder and a bona fide stalker? Creepy, claustrophobic, like watching a car crash in slow motion but I couldn't look away or stop turning the pages. Alice by turns inspires pity, sympathy and true horror. Not a nice book, but brilliantly done and will stay with me for a long time after finishing it.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

Alice has been cleaning Tom’s flat every Wednesday for a year. She becomes infatuated by him and wants nothing more than to meet him face to face and for him to fall in love.

This is a story about obsession and the way women are perceived. It highlights just how far people will really go to get what they want.

I liked this book! I found some parts really interesting and exciting but other parts quite slow. It took me quite a wee while to read this which surprised me considering I thought this was right up my alley!

I think I’m still a bit confused about what actually happened so can’t wait to find others who have read it who can maybe explain 🙈. There’s a chance I might reread it next year to see what my thoughts are when I’m in the mood for it!

I’d recommend this if you like a weird book and books about obsession!

I was completely intrigued by the premise of this book. Alice has been cleaning Tom’s flat every Wednesday for the past year. Wiping surfaces and smoothing out his bed sheets, these simple acts leading to a deep infatuation. Counting down the moment until they will meet face to face, but she soon discovers that love may not be the cure she had hoped for. Brilliantly written, this novel slowly draws you in as it explores, class, race, loneliness and mental health and it will stay with you long after you turn the last page. Thank you to NetGalley, Little, Brown Book Group and the author got the chance to review.