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Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood (2004)

by Jennifer Traig

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7443329,957 (3.56)26
When her father found the washing machine crammed with everything from her sneakers to her barrettes, 12-year-old Jennifer Traig had a simple explanation: They d been tainted by the pork fumes emanating from the kitchen and had to be cleansed. The same fumes compelled Jennifer to wash her hands for 30 minutes before dinner. Jennifer s childhood mania was the result of her then undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder joining forces with her Hebrew studies. While preparing for her bat mitzvah, she was introduced to an entire set of arcane laws and quickly made it her mission to follow them perfectly. Her parents nipped her religious obsession in the bud early on, but as her teen years went by, her natural tendency toward the extreme led her down different paths of adolescent agony and mortification. Years later, Jennifer remembers these scenes with candor and humor. What emerges is a portrait of a well-meaning girl and her good-natured parents, and a very funny, very sharp look back at growing up."… (more)
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» See also 26 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 33 (next | show all)
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. ( )
  settingshadow | Aug 19, 2023 |
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. ( )
  nab6215 | Jan 18, 2022 |
Sidesplitting memoir of growing to adulthood with OCD. Surprisingly breezy and yet not insincere. ( )
  Je9 | Aug 10, 2021 |
Hilarious. Jennifer Traig is a woman after my own heart.
  aratiel | Sep 5, 2018 |
Probably closer to three stars, except it hit a couple of my favorite topics (childhood mental disorder, and the minutiae of any kind of strict religion). ( )
  chelseaknits | Dec 14, 2017 |
Showing 1-5 of 33 (next | show all)
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For my family, Alain, Judith, and Vicky, who have the patience of saints
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My father and I were in the laundry room and we were having a crisis.
Quotations
They had raised me to express my Jewishness by renting Woody Allen movies, not by keeping kosher and observing Shabbat.
With all the swaying, flailing, and outbursts, a Jewish congregation could easily be mistaken for a Tourette’s convention.
There are many things I like about Judaism. I like that it encourages napping and liberal consumption of saturated fats, that it requires you to wear new clothes on some holidays and to eat cheesecake on others. But what I like best is that it encourages catered affairs for middle-schoolers
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When her father found the washing machine crammed with everything from her sneakers to her barrettes, 12-year-old Jennifer Traig had a simple explanation: They d been tainted by the pork fumes emanating from the kitchen and had to be cleansed. The same fumes compelled Jennifer to wash her hands for 30 minutes before dinner. Jennifer s childhood mania was the result of her then undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder joining forces with her Hebrew studies. While preparing for her bat mitzvah, she was introduced to an entire set of arcane laws and quickly made it her mission to follow them perfectly. Her parents nipped her religious obsession in the bud early on, but as her teen years went by, her natural tendency toward the extreme led her down different paths of adolescent agony and mortification. Years later, Jennifer remembers these scenes with candor and humor. What emerges is a portrait of a well-meaning girl and her good-natured parents, and a very funny, very sharp look back at growing up."

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Hachette Book Group

An edition of this book was published by Hachette Book Group.

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HighBridge

An edition of this book was published by HighBridge.

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