Passing for Normal: A Memoir of Compulsion

Amy is an awesome writer, she tends to skip around a little but her detail and thoughts and opinions about everything are just so selective and different. Too bad there weren Ot more writers like her. She talks about her life and the things she had to deal with. She did very well in school even with her disabilities.

Amy had a very rough up bringing dealing with her two disabilities (1) Tourette Syndrome which is a rare disease that is characterized by involuntary tics and by uncontrollable verbalization involving especially echolalia and the use of obscene language, (2) Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by obsessions or compulsions having one or both is sufficient for the diagnosis. An obsession is a recurrent and intrusive thought, feeling, idea, or sensation. A compulsion is a conscious, recurrent pattern of behavior a person feels driven to perform. Amy didn Ot even know she had the disorders until she was older. She had to deal with her family and friends who thought she was crazy. She does finally end up getting the strength to go see a doctor because she knows that something is wrong with her. She was diagnosed with OCD and Tourette Syndrome, so her doctor put her on Prozac and other medications.

After, when she knew she had the disorders she had a hard time, and didn Ot want people to say bad things or make fun of her because of her disabilities, so she kept them to herself. When Amy is at her group meeting she isolates herself, she says ?My main problem is this: I seriously questioned myself up to a group of people who wouldn Ot or rather couldn Ot accept my party line. When Amy says ? people who wouldn Ot or couldn Ot accept my party line she means, people wouldn Ot accept her for her. She was afraid that people wouldn Ot accept her.

In group she met a man named Bryant. They shared many similarities, which built their strong relationship. When Amy moved and was able to start at a new school, she loved it! She made many new friends, who again didn Ot know she had these disabilities. Her friends thought that the twitching and the need to touch everything was cool. Amy eventually becomes obsessed with her obsessions and compulsions.

Amy goes to college at Vassar like her many other relatives, where her and her first boyfriend begin living together. She was afraid of relationships, afraid of getting hurt, and afraid of being touched, but most of all afraid of any sexual activity. She trusted Ben very much though.

In the last chapter she sends a very strong message that includes the title of the book. ?The older I get the more arsenals I acquire, the better I get at keeping my secrets, sometimes overriding them, sometimes Passing for Normal.

This book has an amazing twist in the end but I wont spoil it for you. It is a great book for any reader that can follow flash backs and such. She uses great detail and amazing thoughts and opinions. She is a great writer.


I liked it. I have an autism spectrum disorder.   October 13, 2003
oddizm (upstate, CA United States)
6 out of 12 found this review helpful

I thought it was a really good book.

I think that overall my experience with Asperger's syndrome (AS)has been more traumatic than hers has been with Tourette's, still, I think it's an important book. "Passing for normal" is something I'm trying to do all the time when I am with people.

My only criticism is that she uses "like autistic" as a description of some of her behaviors and implies that it's a BAD thing to act autistic. It sort of feels like a put-down to me, but I don't think she intended autistic people to read her book and feel that way.

It's amazing at the overlapping issues that Tourette's has with AS (some people have both), but they don't have any intrisic problem with making friends or understand typical motivations, as she shows.

I thought her description of her relationship with her father was really interesting.


there are much better books on this topic   January 6, 2003
1 out of 22 found this review helpful

This memoir read like an article that was stretched out into an entire book. It was not a particularly interesting memoir or a good book on the topic of OCD or Tourette's. It was long-winded, obvious, and stale.