Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking: A Life Lived Obsessively

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This memoir was ultimately less a memoir of her life and more a memoir of her brain and thought patterns. Amongst them is the way the matrix of obsession, compulsion and intrusion represents an exaggeration of conventional anxieties. Some interesting insights into the neurodivergent brain but mostly seemed to be anecdotes about going to Disneyland/California. Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking is a culmination of a life spent obsessing, offering a glimpse into Marianne's brain, but also an insight into the lives of others like her. There is not much that could be considered widely applicable, even to those with the same conditions, as the author is telling specific anecdotes and exploring her own feelings rather than speaking in generalities.

I have so much respect for author being able to open herself up in such a way and I think that this book will be so helpful for so many people because it can show them they are not alone and are deserving of help.I felt recognised on every page, learned so many new things, and laughed so hard I choked on my water. Part self-help book, part diary entry, the wellness genre demands neat resolutions and the elimination of excess – even for the most profoundly devastating and chaotic of health experiences. I related to this book but, frankly, her life just not interesting enough to hold-up an entire book.

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review, with thanks to the author, the publisher and Netgalley.As a Los Angeles native, it was enlightening to see how Marianne wrote about my home with fresh eyes and made me appreciate it and question it in new ways. Would I sometimes like to soften my sensory processing issues, wear anything other than cotton without having a screaming fit?

Depression gets William Styron’s Darkness Visible, psychosis Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. The first essay in particular, 'I am old now, but I wasn't then,' is a work of art, but in general, I loved going down the rabbit hole of Marianne's obsessions, her observations on pop culture and the tales of her travels as each essay unfolded.

It’s probably more my own problem with desperately wanting someone’s experiences to mirror mine, but I feel like the first part of this book was like “listen to me, I’m like you, you try to hard to find people who can relate to you and FINALLY here’s one, you’re not alone” and then the rest of the book made me think “nah, scratch that, this person isn’t like me and it’s making me feel like a failure for not being able to do the things she’s doing, also, how is she managing to do them? Would I like to feel more restful, or be able to try new foods or deviate from my strict routine without a meltdown? Purely because when I read I want to get lost in the world of the book and not be reminded of real life, which is my own personal preferences! However, as is the nature of essay collections/memoirs, varying topics brought with them varying levels of interest on my part - and as a result the reading experience had peaks and troughs for me. This is a personal memoir of OCD, autism and ADHD, in the form of a series of short, unconnected essays on subjects like time, death, Disney (special interests… if you know, you know!

Marianne Eloise has a lighthearted, easily readable tone that is present all throughout the book and works really well when talking about mental health and neurodivergence. While she claims “it’s impossible to gracefully tell the story of obsession”, the pull of “grace” is everywhere in the book, as struggle gives way to the inevitable triumph of wellness: the mental health epiphany. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Presumably informed by Baudrillard, Marianne Eloise reads the manicured joys of Disneyland’s “picture-perfect, pastel world” in three ways: as a source of obsession; a space for healing; and a site designed in its “DNA” to defer the fear of death. I hadn't come across Marianne Eloise before but I'm now going to look for everything else she has written.

most of it just didn’t really feel relevant to me, and i didn’t really take anything away from it - maybe it’s my fault for expecting something else from this, but I was left a bit disappointed.