Just Checking: Scenes from the life of an obsessive-compulsive [Paperback]

Emily Colas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

As my friend the heroin addict says, "You're only as sick as your secrets."

Emily Colas -- young, intelligent, well-educated wife and mother of two -- had a secret that was getting in the way of certain activities. Like touching people. Having a normal relationship with her husband. Socializing. Getting a job. Eating out. Like leaving the house. Soon there was no interval in her life when she was not

just checking

This raw, darkly comic series of astonishing vignettes is Emily Colas' achingly honest chronicle of her twisted journey through the obsessive-compulsive disorder that came to dominate her world. In the beginning it was germs and food. By the time she faced the fact that she was really "losing it," Colas had become a slave to her own "hobbies" -- from the daily hair cutting to incessant inspections of her children's clothing for bloodstains.

A shocking, hilarious, enormously appealing account of a young woman struggling to gain control of her life, this is Emily Colas' exposé of a soul tormented, but balanced by a buoyance of spirit and a piercing sense of humor that may be her saving grace.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What could have been a fascinating exploration of a complex psyche never gets much beyond the level of stand-up comedy in this disappointing memoir of a young woman's life with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Substituting sarcasm for insight, Colas presents brief, easily digestible tidbits describing her overwhelming fear that she might catch diseases from strangers. She recounts her bizarre rituals of handwashing, garbage disposal, 800-number calling (is this product really safe?) that eventually hurt others and destroyed her marriage. Colas can be funny ?(an episode of the stranger's underpants in the laundromat dryer is especially amusing ("I called my OB to ask her if she'd be willing to test me for gonorrhea")?but her flat prose and superficial approach mask an intelligence that's never sufficiently engaged with this material?a typical analysis is, "It sucks big time." Though Colas provides occasional glimpses of a disturbed childhood, she quickly covers them up with her flippant comic routine. She's disappointed that her illness is less interesting than heroin addiction?it's just "insanity lite," she writes, and "Rock stars don't get magazine covers because they kept their audience waiting while they washed their hands twenty times." By keeping her book at the level of a Seinfeld routine, Colas ensures that readers will gain little insight into a condition that deserves better treatment than it gets in this memoir lite.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Colas worries a lot. She fears that the baby-sitter is using the family's toothbrushes. She suspects someone has tampered with her Cap'n Crunch. An obsessive-compulsive mother of two, Colas makes worry an art. This anecdotal, first-person account of Colas' illness is highly readable and funny. It also benefits from one of the symptoms of the illness (which affects 2.5 percent of Americans over the life course): a vague awareness that something is awry. At its best, Just Checking is a lighthearted glimpse of a treatable illness. But it's not the whole story. After she runs over a chipmunk, Colas repeatedly returns to the scene to verify that she has not killed a child. Behind the comic behaviors that Colas emphasizes is a gnawing disorder that is often painful and frightening. One hopes that Colas will take up her pen again, explore this part of her experience, and risk the darkness. Lee Reilly --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671024388
• ISBN-13: 978-0671024383
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #125,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sharp, Funny Vignettes, November 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Just Checking (Hardcover)

What I haven't noticed in reviews posted here is a description of this book's form. It's not a continuous narrative; rather, it's made up out of sharp vignettes which each have a title taken from a popular phrase. This does give it the feel of a stand-up routine, of linked pieces, rather than an organic story. However, Colas's intelligent witty writing is not only humorous, but also is one of the best presentations of how "logical" OCD-caused rituals can seem to those who suffer from it and how you become trapped inside your own head with no reference to reality. I did wish the book longer and for it to have a more coherent structure, but it's an amazing first book and a genuinely good entry into the exponentially expanding field of literature deadling with psychological illness -- both in the sense of being well-written and in describing symptoms. People who have relatives or loved ones who suffer from OCD might especially want to read this book for its black humor and excellent descriptions of how it _feels_ to have something most people can't even begin to understand.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Do Not Take This Book To Lunch, November 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Just Checking: Scenes from the life of an obsessive-compulsive (Paperback)

You will experience great difficulty returning to work. Also, you may exhibit some strange checking behavior while eating your BLT.

Exhausting. The guilt I felt in deriving enjoyment from Colas' tale of insanity was tempered only by the recognition that facing the brink is just a matter of degrees. Nearly everyone could find a suitable diagnosis at some point in their lives, whether chemical or situational. Few, however, could find the humor to expose their disturbing mental processes as adeptly as Colas has.

I hope that in sharing her story, Emily Colas has derived a great deal of therapeutic benefit. I know I have.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I don't know . . ., March 25, 2002

By 

dreadful light (Nicholasville, KY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Just Checking: Scenes from the life of an obsessive-compulsive (Paperback)

Emily Colas' memoir, Just Checking, is like an uncomfortable stand-up comedy routine. Broken into small chunks of conversational writing with sometimes interesting, sometimes bewildering headings (for example, "Mussolini Ate His Penie"), Colas' account jumps frantically from past to present, her childhood events to her typical day-to-day life as a wife and mother. It's sometimes hard to follow where exactly we are at any given time--and if that's intentional, I'm not sure it really works.

There are some terribly intense, disturbing moments (such as when Colas' apartment fills with garbage and dirt because she becomes wary of cleaning supplies, and she refuses to take a shower for fear of harming her unborn child), but overall the book floats glibly from event to event, nearly discounting Colas' painful descent into the illness. I know that this is was an extremely uncomfortable story to tell, and I like the approach of bringing humor to a subject that normally isn't very funny, but there are times when the writing backs away when it should have really delved deeper.