Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood

Ms. Traig has a real talent for taking events that are quite tragic, and must have been agonizing to experience, and making them hilarious. You feel almost guilty laughing, as a young Jenny washes her hands dozens of times while wondering if water is really clean. While her memoir is primarily one of a "closet OCD sufferer," her scrupulosity and other concerns give an interesting insight into Judaism, for those of us who had no idea which holidays were fasts and that Jewish-ness is passed down through the mother. Her light, witty handling of serious matters--Judaism, OCD, family relationships--is truly spectacular. This book was of special interest to me because it made me aware of several symptoms of OCD that I had as a child. Discussing it with another, similarly surprised friend, we decided that no, rearranging objects in perfect right angles for fear of the Apocalypse wasn't exactly normal behavior. So this book is especially enjoyable if you see a bit of yourself in Jenny.

Not one page I didn't think was hysterical. Jennifer didn't inherit her Judaism from her mother, but she sure did inherit mother's sense of humor. Mom sounds like she could write her own book too! I related to the era...loved the honesty. Reminds me a lot of David Sedaris...if David had been a Jewish teen with OCD. Without the OCD connection...the humor of her Jewish conversion is some of the best comedy I've read. Jennifer, embrace this genre and write more! I'll be watching for more...girl, I think you could make pumping gas funny.

I happened to see Jenny Traig read in San Francisco, and picked up her book on a whim. What a treat! I can see why another reviewer found the book too harsh, but it happened to hit my funny bone just right, over and over and over again (and over. Wash your hands!). The details of her life are so sad and so terrible that all you can do is laugh hysterically at her misfortune. One of the book jacket reviews said that the author does not lapse "even for a moment into self-pity." This is true. However, I would recommend that Ms. Traig try more for moments of genuine and sadness and joy in her next work. This book definitely stands on its own. But there are hints of real pain there - she writes that she never felt like she belonged to her family, compares her relationship with her sister to the Bible's Esau and Jacob, admits she was anorexic. While it's great to be able to squeeze humor from stuff like this, it's even greater to be able to acknowledge the real sorrow behind it too. I think the author is up to the task. I look forward to her next book.

I laughed until I cried while reading Jennifer Traig's harrowing memoir. It is easily one of the best books to come out in 2004. Under the humor -- and there's a lot of it -- is an important story about a little-known mental disorder, scrupulosity. As a family member of a scrupulosity sufferer, I can say that Ms Traig's story rings true. What's great about her account, though, is that she manages to find humor in her story and unlike many other adolescent memoirs, does not try to over-analyze, simplify, explain or place blame.

From age seven to 17, Jennifer Traig suffered from scrupulosity. What is scrupulosity? Mix a borderline autistic with a religious zealot, and you'll end up with an obsessive-compulsive teenager who literally looks for the devil in every painstaking detail. Did her Trapper Keeper rest for a nanosecond on the desk of the biggest slut in eighth grade? Better take it home and scrub it over and over with bleach. Was that butter contaminated with non-kosher toast crumbs? Better stick to a breakfast of Diet Coke Popsicles, again. When she starts driving it gets even worse: did she or didn't she hit someone on the last block? Better drive back three times to make sure. It's not surprising that driving was one of her least favorite activities. This resulting black comedy was Jennifer Traig's life for ten years. The variety of obsessive-compulsive disorder she dealt with, scrupulosity, was first recognized in the 12th century in the form of super pious monks who were compelled to pray for seven hours a day. As she points out, scruple in Latin means small, sharp stone; for her life, scrupulosity meant constant self-questioning and ever nagging doubts. Raised by a Catholic mother and Jewish father, neither of whom was overly observant, Traig finds herself more drawn to the synagogue than St. Peters and this is where her life becomes riddled with the small, sharp stones of scrupulosity. She self-teaches herself Judaism, focusing in, with her OCD ways, on the church laws regarding cleanliness. She is fixated with hand washing, and conveys the depth of the disorder by dropping into the book periodic 'interstitials,' which include guidelines for hand washing as well as recipes for all the scrupulous anorexics out there (anorexia being a more common form of OCD). At age thirteen, in order to fully convert to Judaism (which is necessary since she is a half-breed, "like Cher") she begins bi-weekly Torah lessons, and with the introduction of Kosher laws, life gets really interesting. When her teacher explains that milk and meat require separate dishes, she instantly decides that this must also apply to toilets. If her sister cooks bacon, then doesn't this render all her worldly belongings unclean and thus subject to immediate purification in the washing machine? Isn't the very floor of the home in which the bacon was cooked impure, and therefore shouldn't you put paper towels underneath your feet for protection? But wait, the glue that holds a new roll of paper towels together might not be kosher so be sure to discard the first several sheets and then, just in case, wash hands. Tragic, yes, but luckily Traig's treatment of this period in her life comes off more tragically funny. Her ability to look back without victimizing herself is remarkable, and since she does it with a huge helping of humor, she manages to keep her memoir apart from a genre filled with "pity poor me!" tomes. It is obvious that she gets her sense of humor from her parents, two people whose re