Jennifer Traig

It's hard to imagine a breezy, funny memoir about OCD and eating disorders, but that seems to be what Traig has written. This slender work is mostly a series of vignettes in the author's childhood plagued by scrupulosity, a religion-tinged variant on classic OCD. If you look too long at any of it, it's hideously sad -- the author's starvation as she invents ever stricter kashrut variants, and growing alienation from everyone -- but it's basically all played for laughs, without really connecting the dots between the episodes.… (mehr)

I thought this would be really embarrassing to read, but she embraces her eccentricities. I couldn't have written this book. I have done a lot of strange things -- not as ocd as Jenny, but weird. I have a mom with "ocd tendancies" and I would do things that seem ocd-ish but I felt no NEED, no I-MUST-DO-THIS-OR-SOMEONE-WILL-DIE feeling. I felt I should this because things wouldn't feel right if I didn't do it. . . .

Anyway, back to this book. I enjoyed laughing with Jenny. I felt her joy and her pain. I am glad she wrote her book and I am glad she is doing better.… (mehr)