Fiction Pick of the Week: Addition

Addition by Toni Jordan 2008

Attractive, educated Grace Lisa Vandenburg (19 letters) counts everything, yes, everything. She orders her life around numbers and while others feel her obsession confines her, Grace is comforted by it. That is until she meets Seamus Joseph O’Reilly (also 19 letters!). His deep feelings for Grace encourage her to explore her behaviour and experiment with treatments. Grace is still unsure as her studies of the great mathematician and inventor, Nikola Tesla (also a counter), have led her to believe that if he were alive today doctors would be trying to diagnose the strange but brilliant workings of his mind and “normalize” him—and thus robbing the world of his numerous creations. Uproariously funny while surprisingly sensitive and thought-provoking, it is a cross between Bridget Jones’s Diary and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Grace’s wit will leave you laughing out loud but also wondering whether those who “suffer” from obsessive-compulsive disorders really do benefit from efforts to “cure” them.