Just Checking
Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive
by Emily ColasWhen people talk, she traces stars in her head, one line for each word. Conversations have to end when the stars do, on multiples of five. When she meets her husband, she uses his judgement to reassure herself of life's safety. He is recruited to taste test all food to make sure it isn't laced with anything, he learns to take off his shoes without using his hands so as not to track in any blood, and to check anything of potential danger to a worrier who sees the danger in every aspect of her life.
The subtitle of this book is an accurate description. The scenes are depicted in vignettes of one paragraph to three pages, and in a few poems. The vignettes all have titles which pun cleverly on their contents. Many of the vignettes are humorous; sometimes they laugh at their author, sometimes at the world, and sometimes they just laugh. Some are frustrated comments on life, and some just are. The book covers the span of the author's life, but focuses on the time she was with her husband(we are told that they divorce early on in the book). The order is roughly chronological; sometimes vignettes jump back or forwards before returning to the timeline. As the author interview at the back of my edition shows, this isn't meant to be advice, insight or wisdom. Instead it captures the one life the author is a qualified expert on- her own.
Happy reading.
