Passing for normal - Amy Wilensky

A GRIPPING MEMOIR OF A YOUNG GIRL’S STRUGGLE WITH TOURETTE’S SYNDROME AND OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER

It began the summer Amy was eight years old. A pretty, high-achieving young girl, she watched in horror as her body began to twitch and jerk. Soon these explosive tics were joined by baffling rituals that dominated her life. Amy’s fears and compulsions ranged from a terror of odd numbers, to a love of multiples of six; from denying herself water, to stockpiling rotting food; from obsessively needing to touch wood, to balancing on the edge of subway platforms. Constantly trying to pass for normal’, her increasingly bizarre behaviour isolated her from her friends and drove her family to distraction. Everyday events became torture. Unable to function normally in the outside world, Amy became a virtual recluse.

By turns tragic and comic, Passing for Normal is a compelling memoir of a young woman’s struggle to come to terms with a life plagued by irrational behaviour, and how she survived a childhood devastated by one of the most misunderstood medical conditions.