Devil in the Details by Jennifer Traig
Published by Back Bay Books
Publication Date February 9, 2006
Source: Library
Genres: Memoir
Goodreads
Devil in the Details announces Jennifer Traig as one of the most hilarious writers to emerge in recent years and one of the strangest! Recalling the agony of growing up obsessive compulsive and a religious fanatic, Traig fearlessly confesses the most peculiar behavior like tirelessly scrubbing her hands for a full half hour before dinner, feeding her stuffed animals before herself, and washing everything she owned because she thought it was contaminated by pork fumes. The result is a book so relentlessly funny and frank, it's totally refreshing.
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 whose 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.
Aww. It's a shame this fell short for you – it does sound quite interesting.
It was interesting, I thinking the way it was written was the problem.