Try Not to Think of a Pink Elephant – Stories about OCD
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2022
Genre: Memoir, Non-Fiction
This (strikingly pink!) book is a collection of personal stories about living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD. Whether you pick it up hoping to be enlightened, educated or even, given the rampant stereotyping, ghoulishly amused, chances are you will also be wholly absorbed and entertained, such is the raw wry witty vibrancy of the five contributors’ writing.
The book’s spark was a long-form essay by Sienna Rose Scully that caught the attention of Fremantle Press publisher Georgia Richter. Scully was eager for others to learn earlier than she did that they weren’t ‘crazy’. Richter then invited Patrick Marlborough, Dani Leever, Katharine Pollock and Martin Ingle – professional creatives with OCD – to add their stories.
The resulting anthology, with an introduction by OCD therapist Kimberley Quinlan, is a powerful complement skimming over the contributors’ complex experience with obsessions and compulsions. Stories differ markedly in tone and texture, but each is underwritten by bravery, perseverance and, when all else fails, humour.