Book Review: Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne
Title: Am I Normal Yet?
Author: Holly Bourne
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
Publication Date: 1st August 2015
Source: Purchased / Kindle
Synopsis: All Evie wants is to be normal. And now that she's almost off her
meds and at a new college where no one knows her as the-girl-who-went-nuts,
there's only one thing left to tick off her list...
But relationships can mess with anyone's
head - something Evie's new friends Amber and Lottie know only too well. The
trouble is, if Evie won't tell them her secrets, how can they stop her making a
huge mistake?
Review:
Evie, the main character of this novel, is
a teenage girl who is recovering from OCD. She was previously hospitalized and
sectioned but when we meet her, she is gradually lowering her medication, about
to go on her first date and trying to be “normal” at her new college where only
her best friend knows about her past.
I went into this book with pre-conceived
ideas about what it would be like: it would be a stereotypical depiction of OCD
as only being about cleanliness and order, with the sufferer most likely having
a revelation that helped them to recover overnight.
I also thought I might find it difficult to
relate to Evie, mostly because she’s 16 (which I’m not) and although we have
OCD in common, I couldn’t imagine what else could be similar between us.
It’s not something I like to admit often,
but I was so wrong.
By the end of the first chapter, I just felt
that the author knew what she was talking about on this subject matter – I
don’t know whether that’s by personal experience or research, but Holly Bourne seems
to have a great handle on the OCD ‘voice’.
Interspersed throughout the book are the
words ‘BAD THOUGHT’ in bold, followed by whatever intrusive thought Evie is
experiencing at that moment.
I think the way that these often came in
the middle of a situation that was seemingly unrelated to the thought, served
well to highlight the interruption caused by these thoughts in real life.
The timing of those thoughts and how
quickly they spiraled out of control felt very realistic to me. It starts off
with Evie preparing for her first date, brushing her teeth and washing her
hands before she leaves. All of a sudden, she has an intrusive thought that she
hasn’t washed her hands properly. She deals with it using the coping mechanisms
she’s learned through therapy and moves on. However, soon those thoughts
escalate from centering on her fear of germs to thoughts like “you’re ugly and
stupid and disgusting”, “you’re a massive weirdo”, and “I’m corrupting my
little sister”.
These are all thoughts that I (and I’m
sure, a lot of other people) can relate to. One intrusive thought on the lower
end of the scale can so quickly lead to other thoughts that gradually become
worse and worse until they completely consume you.
For me, the escalation of Evie’s rituals
was also very familiar. She moves from washing her hands and scrubbing herself
clean to touching lampposts six times because it feels ‘right’ and eventually
circling around her route home several times so that she can touch the
lampposts in the way that she wants to. When observed side by side, there is no
logical connection between washing your hands and touching lampposts – if
anything, they’re contradictory considering the fact that lampposts are
probably covered in germs but to Evie, it’s just essential that she does this.
Although a lot of Evie’s motivation and
goals were very typical of a teenager, I still found them relatable. Like Evie,
my mental health issues started in my teens so I shared her feeling of having
missed out on a significant period of my life because these issues prevented me
from doing “normal” teenage things.
The only times I really noticed the age
difference between us was when she made some bad (and typically teenage)
decisions. The adult in me was screaming at her!
We also get a glimpse into Evie’s sessions
with her therapist, Sarah. Therapy sessions are usually portrayed in that
stereotypical way, where the patient lies on a leather sofa and pours their
heart out to a their therapist who so often is shown to have a “there, there”
approach.
In Sarah, we see a portrayal that is (in my
experience) much more realistic. Sarah calls Evie out on her destructive
behaviour, challenges her to keep pushing her boundaries but ultimately wants
to help Evie recover, even if that means having to break her a little more
first.
Finally, on a subject other than mental
health, Holly Bourne does a great job of addressing some feminism issues in a
subtle way. Throughout the book, The Spinster Club (which provides some comic
relief from the serious theme of mental health) discusses issues such as tax on
feminine hygiene products, the way women are viewed by men, and the amount of
time women spending thinking and talking about men. Throughout the book, I
found myself nodding along and agreeing with everything they were saying but it
was only once I’d finished and read a few reviews of the book that I really
noticed that that secondary theme of female empowerment was there.
On the whole, I found ‘Am I Normal Yet?’ to
be an honest and realistic portrayal of OCD. Evie’s experience is not presented
in a comfortable way – the descriptions of some of the lengths that she’s gone
to for her OCD are harrowing but ultimately, need to be included to paint a
truthful picture.
I would absolutely recommend this book to
anyone suffering from OCD, anyone who knows someone with OCD (or any mental
illness) and honestly, anyone who wants a real insight into the mind of someone
with OCD.
A word of warning however for any readers
with OCD – I found myself feeling even more emotional than normal when I was
reading this. I think that’s testament to how realistic it is, but just bear in
mind that the book will probably shine a spotlight on a lot of your own
intrusive thoughts and rituals whether they’re in your past or your present.
I read this on my Kindle and I don’t
think I’ve ever highlighted so many lines in a book before. At the start of the
book, I decided to highlight anything that I found particularly relatable and
I’ve included these below:
“That’s the thing about anxiety – it limits
your experiences so the only stories you have to tell are the ‘I went mad’
ones.”
“You’ve imposed rituals into therapy, haven’t
you?”
“They’re never ‘there, there’, Cognitive
Behavioural Therapists. They’re more like having a strict teacher that you know
cares about their students deep down somewhere. The most sympathy I’ve ever got
out of Sarah was a silent passing of the tissue box…”
“I was getting bored. This was a problem.
Boredom leads to worrying.”
“You can worry about anything and
everything, dream up all sorts of weird and wonderful situations to be
terrified of in the hope your fear will control the world somehow…and yet the
world remains uncontrollable.”
“As I said before – mental illness, we sure
as hell know the words for it, but we still can’t have sympathy with the actual
behaviour.”
“Just because it’s illogical doesn’t mean
it’s any less scary.”
“So much life lost.”
“Maybe…the word of hope.”
“I don’t know why it was six. But six just
felt…right.”
“To acknowledge the thought, bring myself
back to the present moment, and walk back out into the band competition –
anxious, yes, but knowing I wasn’t letting it win.”
“I missed yet more of my life, because of
myself.”
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