Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood

by Jennifer Traig

Recalling the agony of growing up as an obsessive-compulsive religious fanatic, Traig fearlessly confesses the most peculiar behaviour - like scrubbing her hands for a full half-hour before meals, feeding her stuffed animals before herself, and washing everything she owned because she thought it was contaminated by pork fumes!

• ISBN10: 031601074X
• ISBN13: 9780316010740
• Publish Date: 1 February 2006 (first published 30 August 2004)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 28 October 2009
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown & Company
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 224
• Language: English

Reviews

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

In Devil in the Details Jennifer Traig recollects her childhood living with OCD in this quirky memoir.

Quirky yes, but Devil in the Details was also a little manic (which explains the OCD). I thought the novel was more like a series of short stories or a vignette of her childhood. To me it felt all very disjointed, one moment she was three and the next thirteen, I never felt a smooth flow between events. Jennifer is very much into her Jewish religion so a lot of her obsessions revolve around being the best and truest she can be to her faith, consisting of multiple washings, praying and flinching on sitting on furniture because the last person who's butt was there could have eaten pork. The second portion focused on her fluctuating anorexia and being a regular (for the most part) teen. Devil in the Details had the potential to be a fun memoir on a rarely discussed topic but fell short for me.