It's truly a joy to be able to read something like this and know other people also have weird brains and what that looks like for them. Like many essays in the book, “Yesterday, Tomorrow and Fantasy” highlights the equivocal status of obsession: it can be as joyful and productive as it is demanding and devastating.

This collection of essays gives the reader great insight into the author's experience of autism and OCD. I'm not trying to say the author owes the reader all the ins-and-outs of her trauma, but if you are writing a memoir focusing on your mental illness and neurodivergency, dancing around the real nitty gritty is pointless. I enjoyed the fact it wasn't all gloomy - her obsessions make her incredibly anxious, but they also make her very focused and determined to follow the healthier ones. At the same time it is extremely entertaining - I particularly loved the descriptions of her travels and experiences in LA.i feel so fortunate to have been able to read this ahead of its publication date next month; i've been a fan of marianne's work for a while and this feels like a brilliant expansion of events and moments i've seen her briefly allude to online over the years. This book is unavoidably nostalgic in many ways, maybe not for everyone - but certainly for those whose brains are wired in such a way that make similar connections. In the introduction, she uses the term neurodivergent, a label that replaces the taxonomies of the doctor’s office with a more personal, holistic definition of being cognitively different. 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.

I liked how relatable the narrator was and the way OCD and Autism are discussed in a much broader sense than what we usually see in media. It's within this ambivalent territory that Marianne Eloise’s debut essay collection-cum-memoir takes the stage. the essays will leave readers feeling secondhand joy and maybe even encouragement to own their love for their own less-than-cool favorite things. 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!

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.