Passing for Normal: A Memoir of Compulsion

The provocative memoir of a young woman's struggle to come to terms with a life plagued by irrational behavior. I am crazy. But maybe I am not. For most of her life, this thought haunted Amy Wilensky as she watched her body do things she couldn't control, repeatedly twitching and contorting into awkward positions. Her mind lurched and veered in ways she didn't understand: She felt that she must touch wood at all times to ward off harm, that chewing a wad of stale gum would prevent a plane crash. Why couldn't she throw away meaningless scraps of paper? Why were six-word sentences strangely satisfying? While Amy excelled in school and led an otherwise 'normal' life, she worried that beneath the surface she was a freak, that there was something irrevocably wrong with her."