Rating: 
Summary: Sharp, Funny Vignettes
Review: What I haven't noticed in reviews posted here is a description of this book's form. It's not a continuous narrative; rather, it's made up out of sharp vignettes which each have a title taken from a popular phrase. This does give it the feel of a stand-up routine, of linked pieces, rather than an organic story. However, Colas's intelligent witty writing is not only humorous, but also is one of the best presentations of how "logical" OCD-caused rituals can seem to those who suffer from it and how you become trapped inside your own head with no reference to reality. I did wish the book longer and for it to have a more coherent structure, but it's an amazing first book and a genuinely good entry into the exponentially expanding field of literature deadling with psychological illness -- both in the sense of being well-written and in describing symptoms. People who have relatives or loved ones who suffer from OCD might especially want to read this book for its black humor and excellent descriptions of how it _feels_ to have something most people can't even begin to understand.
Rating: 
Summary: incredible, revealing work
Review: With the help of medication Emily Colas has managed to sit down and knock out a book that takes you inside the head of an obsessive compulsive. It's not cute, it's not quirky, it's not charmingly eccentric or any of the other adjectives common TV portrayals of this illness would lead you to believe. It is a living hell that confines Colas to her house and severes her links from society with extreme fear and a mind bent on extrapolating threat from every detail of life. Spots on the sidewalk? Must be disease carrying blood. But through shoes? Well, they soles of them are worn thin in some places...Dinner date with an attractive guy presents a dilemma: switch your poisoned plate fo his while he's in the kitch fetching salt? But then you might get fingered for his murder. Eat it yourself and die? And Colas ends up marrying this guy, who ends up being part of a household where rituals include buying six toothbrushes for colas and then helping her inspect the outer and inner wrapping for air-tightness. Tasting her food at restaurants to be sure there are no ground up hypodermic needles in there...naturally, in spite of "in sickness and in health" it gets to be too much. So Colas hides her fears from her husband for awhile, successfully, until she gives it away one day when she nears the TV to change the volume just as the character starts to vomit blood, and Colas can't contain her terror that the TV screen character may have exposed her to some disease...Cola's writes with candor and lack of self pity. She dispassionately flays the mind of an OCD, and she does so in a spare, no-frills style that includes everything you need to know and no more. It's riveting and horrifying at the same time, and Colas has done a great service towards the understanding of mental illness.
Rating:
Summary: Do Not Take This Book To Lunch
Review: You will experience great difficulty returning to work. Also, you may exhibit some strange checking behavior while eating your BLT. Exhausting. The guilt I felt in deriving enjoyment from Colas' tale of insanity was tempered only by the recognition that facing the brink is just a matter of degrees. Nearly everyone could find a suitable diagnosis at some point in their lives, whether chemical or situational. Few, however, could find the humor to expose their disturbing mental processes as adeptly as Colas has. I hope that in sharing her story, Emily Colas has derived a great deal of therapeutic benefit. I know I have.
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