Addition (Toni Jordan)

This is one of the books I picked up just for the heck of it from the 'Recent Arrivals' at the local library. Anyways, who would not want to read a book titled 'Addition'? Do people really hate math that much?!

Addition is all about a feisty out-of-work 30-something primary school teacher - Grace Vandenburg. What is different about her that would make me read the entire story? Why, she has OCD! Oh yea, and not the garden variety. She doesn't have to wash her hands every minute, nor does she have to line up her pens and pencils just so. She is addicted to numbers. They are her friends.

Traumatized by an accident when she was 8; everything she does, she counts. The number of steps to the store (the same one every time), the number of bites to finish her carrot cake (number of bites equals number of poppy seeds the chef randomly sprinkles in top!), etc. And she does have to do certain things by specific numbers. Multiples of 5. Why would anyone like the number 3, she wonders, so difficult to do the math in everyday life! So whether she is getting up in the middle of the night to measure her walls from end to end, or wasting the whole day counting the number of bristles on her toothbrush, she is ALWAYS counting. Else, her world goes out of order and she cannot breathe! You get the picture by now, I guess.

While it may seem like the book is set up to be boring, it is not. The back-story to her OCD roots, the way she gets petrified when her world goes out of order just because all tables at her restaurant are full, her stealing a banana at the checkout counter from the guy behind her (she HAS to have 10 in her basket!) that leads to so much more in her life - are all interestingly written. And the author manages to include some fun numbers trivia here and there. Mostly though there is a side story where she compares herself to Nikola Tesla for some fanciful reason. And those were the parts that just didn't grab me. I did understand her attachment to him just because he counted numbers and he would 'get her', but apart from that, I felt overwhelmed by the Nikola info at times.

Slowly, events happen in her life which make her check into therapy, and what happens from there is what should be left for the reader to find out without me blabbing about it here. But from that point on, I'd say the story is entirely believable and the ending is refreshing.

3 stars/5

P.S. What ARE these Cuisinaire Rods they keep talking about anyhow?