Puzzled: A Memoir of Growing Up with OCD

Irish cartoonist Cooke’s debut graphic novel memoir neatly articulates his childhood and teenage experience managing persistent anxious thoughts that he deems “the Puzzle,” which he later learns is undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. The novel’s clean, unadorned art style enhances the persuasive verbal and visual jigsaw metaphor, which clearly evidences the creator’s lonely hardship as his numerous attempts to solve the unrelenting Puzzle fail. At first, 10-year-old Cooke, who attends Catholic school, engages in an extensive bedtime prayer routine, only tucking himself in once his Hail Marys feel just right. At 12, intrusive thoughts insist he must run up the stairs or risk his family dying horrifically. When, at 14, he begins counting calories, the compulsion soon results in an anorexia and hypochondria diagnosis that eventually leads him to uncovering a “piece that fits”: a description of OCD. In a closing chapter, Cooke shares his first experience attending therapy, provides a digestible introduction to OCD’s multiple forms and symptoms, and dispels common myths about the disorder, explaining that people who like cleaning and organizing are not a “little OCD” because “no one with OCD enjoys what it makes them do.” An afterword concludes. Ages 10–14. (Apr.)