You'll find Passing for Normal in the psychology section of your local bookshop. Really, it shouldn't be there. Perhaps there is no specific category into which this book fits comfortably, being relevant to both clinicians as well those who fancy a damn good read.

Amy Wilensky tells of her battles with the neurological disorder Tourette's syn. drome and how they shaped her childhood and adolescence. During this time they were dismissed as "too much nervous energy." She goes on to tell us how she dealt with her condition and later the development of obsessive compulsive disorder. She describes the events with honesty and simplicity. She tried to lead a normal life while being hampered enormously by her physical and mental tics. Combined with her near pathological penchant for hoarding, her story is genuinely engrossing.

The condition seems like a shopping trolley of thoughts, constantly needing to be filled yet impossible to control. The occasionally voyeuristic insight into the disorders and their treatment makes this book difficult to put down. The passage describing her first Tourette's "class" is deeply thought provoking yet funny at the same time.

Far from being the stereotypical Tourette's sufferer, Amy Wilensky is a pretty, articulate, intelligent woman. The frankness of her memoir goes a long way to oppose the image of the raving, coprolalic Tourette's patient. Many do not realise that only 10% of sufferers swear spontaneously. Skilfully, yet not vindictively, Wilensky exposes the ignorance at large in the community where diagnosis and treatment are concerned. Passages concerning the onset at 8 years old and the process of realisation that a neurological disorder was present are most revealing, with taunts from peers and parents alike seeming particularly wounding to the fragile mind. At such a young age, who can know for certain that their head won't fall off if they don't stop twitching?

You can't help but read the book and feel a strong sense of admiration for the author who, having come to terms with the essentially untreatable nature of the disease, has had the courage to record her personal experiences as eloquently as this.