RaveThe Washington PostBailey makes clear that the feeling of living with the disorder is not benign, and her greatest achievement with this book is to vividly depict the hellscape of a mind ravaged by severe OCD ... The book is almost entirely narrative-driven, with the only scientific exposition of OCD provided by Finch in her sessions with Bailey; for the most part, the reader lives with Bailey in the prison of her OCD-ridden mind. This makes the book one of the best I have read on the phenomenology of OCD ... Despite some jarring writerly missteps—a few dream sequences, presented in hackneyed fashion; that abrupt ending—the overall effect the book has on the reader is, first, one of overwhelming sympathy for the author, who has endured years of emotional torture perpetrated by her own mind. I hope this book finds a wide readership: It will offer solace to OCD sufferers who will understand that they are not alone and who might gain hope of remission; for other readers, it will provide a harrowing sense of what many OCD sufferers have to endure just to get through the day.
Peter D. Kramer
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewKramer is not out to enthrall but rather to re-engage with an important debate that’s been brewing since the dawn of biological psychiatry: Do antidepressants work? Kramer argues forcefully that they do ... This book would be yet another contribution to the literature of pro- and antidrug jeremiads except that it is so careful and measured and fair, and at times even candidly self-doubting, in its presentation, that it can’t be classified as such ... If you can wade through the statistical and methodological thickets that Kramer, as your Virgil, leads you through in this book, you will most likely come away convinced by his argument for the efficacy of antidepressants — and moved by his humane concern for his patients, and for the needless suffering of unmedicated patients around the world.
