Well Enough Alone: A Cultural History of My Hypochondria

Publishers Weekly

Blending an eclectic mish-mash of medical history with hilarious anecdotes about her own unsavory illnesses, real or imagined, Traig (Devil in the Details) creates a self-poking, sympathetic memoir. Essentially, these are essays about her various "somatoform disorders," a condition, as she describes, "in which you translate stress, or unhappiness, or too much free time, into actual physical symptoms." Coming to terms with a body she always hated, the author, who is the daughter of a doctor, has grown comfortable diagnosing her own aches and pains, thanks especially to the Internet, and delves merrily into a chronological account of her sufferings from childhood to adulthood: food poisoning at Jewish summer camp, anorexia, compulsive obsessive disorder, "essential tremor," eczema, irritable bowel syndrome, bad teeth. Occasionally, she offers tongue-and-cheek history, when hypochondria was blamed on an excess of black bile, called the "Hebraic debility." Traig can write winningly about the 10-pound weight of her oversized breasts or home stool collection and still be charmingly witty. She savors the attention that being sick accords her, though the cure-all Prozac has robbed her of her complaints and granted her the unthinkable: health and happiness. (July)