Devil in the Details

August 30, 2004
In this 1970s memoir, Traig describes how, from the age of 12 until her freshman year at Brandeis, she suffered from various forms of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), including anorexia and a rarer, "hyper-religious form" of OCD called scrupulosity, in which sanctified rituals such as hand washing and daily prayer are repeated in endless loops. The daughter of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, Traig becomes obsessed with Jewish ritual, inventing her own prayers since her Jewish education is limited. Initially, Traig's family is amused; eventually, they try to help. Still, this memoir is less about suffering than it is about punch lines. When Traig swathes herself in head-to-toe flannel on hot summer days, her mother points to a scantily clad teenager on a talk show entitled My Teen Dresses Too Sexy
and suggests Traig cool off like the adolescent "in the red vinyl number with the cut-outs over the chest and fanny." Traig spoofs Jewish rituals, cracking up at elaborate bar mitzvahs produced like Las Vegas floor shows and the meticulous analysis that goes into deeming a food item kosher. The author's behavior makes her seem like a character on Seinfeld
or Curb Your Enthusiasm
, and her book is a funny though sometimes cursory look at mental illness. Agent, Emily Forland.
(Sept.)

Forecast:
Readers who can't get enough of wacky childhood stories by Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris and Haven Kimmel may like Traig's book. She'll make appearances at Jewish book fairs and in San Francisco, and her association with
McSweeney's and the
Forward (she contributes to both), as well as her recent essay in the
New York Times Magazine, could draw audiences.

September 1, 2004
In the fashion of Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors and Haven Kimmel's A Girl Named Zippy, this is a memoir with an edge. The vastly talented Traig (Judaikitsch), a contributor to McSweeney's and the Forward, portrays her painful struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder: "Obsessive-compulsive disorders foster a strange relationship with one's body. You're constantly coming after it with tweezers and anti-bacterials. It is part enemy, part endless pastime. It is always giving you something to do and dominate." While describing her attempts to function normally, she constructs a narrative that will make readers laugh aloud. Traig's disorder manifests itself in terms of hyperreligiosity, which she recounts in hysterical detail. Her efforts to adhere, in a vacuum, to Jewish law, are particularly amusing. She also writes affectionately about her long-suffering family members, who are funny enough to stage their own sitcom. In the end, she succeeds in overcoming her illness, providing a provocative yet entertaining memoir in the process. Highly recommended for all public libraries. Lynne F. Maxwell, Villanova Univ. Sch. of Law Lib., PA

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2004
By turns hilarious and harrowing, this spiritual-psychological autobiography poses a classification conundrum: it fits as comfortably alongside titles by David Sedaris (especially " Naked, "with its similarly themed essay "A Plague of Tics") as it does next to those by Oliver Sacks. When she was an adolescent, Traig's loose collection of neuroses coalesced into a hyperreligious form of obsessive-compulsive disorder known as scrupulosity. The condition finds the once spiritually indifferent teenager purifying her school binders, using separate bathrooms for milk and meat, and perplexing and vexing her mixed-faith family. Traig guides readers through her baffling, lonely world with frequent stops to deliver ba-da-boom zingers ("Today the condition is common enough that there's a Scrupulous Anonymous. I've never joined, so I can't tell you if they subscribe to all twelve steps or just repeat one over and over"). Though uproariously funny, this is perhaps best for intermittent sampling. Considering the deliberate--one might even say obsessive--manner in which Traig wrings humor out of her tribulations, one can't escape the sense that she has unwittingly reproduced her childhood affliction in book form.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)