Just Checking: Scenes from the life of an obsessive-compulsive (Emily Colas) TP-Good

As my friend the heroin addict says, “You”re only as sick as your secrets.”

Emily Colas — young, intelligent, well-educated wife and mother of two — had a secret that was getting in the way of certain activities. Like touching people. Having a normal relationship with her husband. Socializing. Getting a job. Eating out. Like leaving the house. Soon there was no interval in her life when she was not

just checking

This raw, darkly comic series of astonishing vignettes is Emily Colas” achingly honest chronicle of her twisted journey through the obsessive-compulsive disorder that came to dominate her world. In the beginning it was germs and food. By the time she faced the fact that she was really “losing it,” Colas had become a slave to her own “hobbies” — from the daily hair cutting to incessant inspections of her children”s clothing for bloodstains.

A shocking, hilarious, enormously appealing account of a young woman struggling to gain control of her life, this is Emily Colas” exposé of a soul tormented, but balanced by a buoyance of spirit and a piercing sense of humor that may be her saving grace.

Publishers Weekly

What could have been a fascinating exploration of a complex psyche never gets much beyond the level of stand-up comedy in this disappointing memoir of a young woman”s life with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Substituting sarcasm for insight, Colas presents brief, easily digestible tidbits describing her overwhelming fear that she might catch diseases from strangers. She recounts her bizarre rituals of handwashing, garbage disposal, 800-number calling (is this product really safe?) that eventually hurt others and destroyed her marriage. Colas can be funny –(an episode of the stranger”s underpants in the laundromat dryer is especially amusing (“I called my OB to ask her if she”d be willing to test me for gonorrhea”)–but her flat prose and superficial approach mask an intelligence that”s never sufficiently engaged with this material–a typical analysis is, “It sucks big time.” Though Colas provides occasional glimpses of a disturbed childhood, she quickly covers them up with her flippant comic routine. She”s disappointed that her illness is less interesting than heroin addiction–it”s just “insanity lite,” she writes, and “Rock stars don”t get magazine covers because they kept their audience waiting while they washed their hands twenty times.” By keeping her book at the level of a Seinfeld routine, Colas ensures that readers will gain little insight into a condition that deserves better treatment than it gets in this memoir lite. (July)