I appreciate Clare's courage and vulnerability in deciding to publish her experience with OCD and ASD. Unfortunately, this book wasn't for me, and I found it difficult to follow the narrative. I imagine that this book will appeal to individuals who may share an experience with Clare, and those who may be more comfortable with epistolary and/or stream of consciousness style writing than I am.

Clare has been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, bringing her unwanted and uncontrollable thoughts.
Clare Green is writing a diary as a form of expression to try to make sense of the world, and quell, or channel her racing and repetitive thoughts.
“Biodiversity, loss, climate change are happening – they are the absolute reality and my consciousness can’t escape this awareness”
She is empty, uncertain, caught in sinking sand “unable to disentangle”
Her goal, and one of the threads throughout this diary is to have the diary published.
At first this seems odd and awkward, and it grates on the reader.
Why would she do this?
Why mention it so often?
Well, why not?
The diary writing is evidently her number one form of therapy, along with her discovery of Buddhism and various inspirational writings.
She’s not writing this to please or entertain us, but more as a window to the constant curious ruminations of her mind.
We are not treated to details of her relationships or environmental agency job, as perhaps these things are not important or relevant to her.
Like a fluttering bird trapped in a cage, we want to somehow see Clare freed of her suicidal ideations, her fears of being evil or becoming a psychopath.
In her words she would rather write than kill people.
It would be too tidy to have her set free, she perceives glimmers and moments of calm when her thought bubbles get so big they finally burst.
Through reading this I am given a certain understanding that this woman’s thinking is certainly different, and the transference of frustration and repetition also begins to drag me down into her quicksand.
I am relieved that her Buddhist friends Diki and Gen-la Pasang are so kind and supportive.
Inspired by their teachings Clare quotes:
To a Buddhist, committing suicide is mistaken because it does not end the suffering, rather the suffering continues on into the next life.”
Clare wishes to stay alive to have her story heard.
This book, this diary could be a useful illustration and insight into the mind of an individual living with O.C.D.
I wish Clare all the best with her great future working with the environment, and her search for enlightenment.

Thanks to #NetGalley and Troubador Publishing Ltd for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I tried to get into this book, but unfortunately I couldn’t. I’m an avid reader of memoirs, especially ones about mental illness, so I expected to enjoy this book. However, I couldn’t connect with Clare at all, and the entries were scrambled and rambling and I struggled to understand the point of what was going on. Overall, it wasn’t very personal, and I didn’t really learn much about the author’s mental health struggles or her personal life.

Unfortunately, this book was a DNF for me. Clare opens up about her very real struggle with OCD/ASD. I am intrigued by the topic of mental health and thought I could relate to the entries, as I too have similar struggles. However, the entries were serious ramblings and I felt that I couldn't connect with Clare based on the entries alone. I wish that more of her personal life was covered throughout the book so that the reader could relate more to Clare. Overall, the premise of the book was intriguing but lacked the personal details for me in order to fully complete.

This ARC was provided by Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This must have really taken some uts to have published. A very personal account of someone who suffers.
I think the book could do with some tweaks to make it more readable as you do tend to get lost as to what is being told. It seems to be a little repetative in parts.

I really did not like this book. It was boring and the writing was weird - kind of a lot of words to say something ,, but ultimately not saying anything.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get through 'The Diary of Clare Green'. I was very interested to read about someone's experience with OCD as I have a loved one who suffers with this disorder. However, I found the book confusing and rambling and difficult to follow. I gave up after a few chapters which is something I rarely ever do.

I don’t care for memoirs, so this wasn’t at all a typical reading choice for me. The main attraction here was OCD, the orderly disorder near and dear to my twitchy glitchy brain. Basically, I was interested to read about how someone might live/cope with OCD, the way it affects their life and lives of their loved ones, etc.
This isn’t that sort of a book. This is a diary of a an environmentally conscious person with a severe spiritual craving that she proceeds to satisfy via endless procession of selfhelp books, meditation, metta, etc. All the things Westerners with the Eastern fetish do. I mean, yes, the author is definitely an obsessive, the way she approaches her passions is obsessive, the way her mind is always on and spinning, the way she incessantly ponders the same things over and over and over again. She’s almost equally obsessed with both the environment and the existence of psychos. She’s also an obsessive diarist, who is obsessed with having her diary published.
That brings us to an interesting quandary…the same way the observer changes the observed, how sincere can someone be in their diaries when they aim for them to be published for the world to behold. The narrative has got to take on a performative aspect, it’s unavoidable. And yes, I know, I know, we live in the stupid, stupid age of empowered oversharing and everyone is given an ample platform to spew their thoughts whether they are worth attention or not, and it’s all too often the latter, but still…a diary implies a certain level of intimacy, a self contained intimacy. It’s genuinely morally wrong to read another person’s diary. Traditionally. Privacy and all that. Frankly, reading this one really shows just how right of a moral that it. Because this really by all means should have stayed a private affair. The sheer audacity of wanting one’s own diary published, the vanity of it all…it’s pretty wild, especially for a non millennial person.
And because I review all I read, here I am, in a strange position of reviewing not only someone’s life, but someone’s inner life, literally. So strange indeed.
To be fair, it isn’t an entirely uninteresting inner life, there are some coherent, albeit all too oft repeated thoughts and I’ve learned entirely too much about the modern spirituality from both the diarist’s perspective and the extensively quoted lifestyle gurus, like Tolle. But overall, this just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work as a memoir, because you don’t really get to know the person all that much, the diary covers less than two years, and it’s all about the person’s thoughts not her actual life. You don’t get to know that much about her dealing with her OCD, despite the fact that it resulted in her defenestrating and severely injuring herself. You don’t get to know much about the family, expect that they seem generally supportive. Or the ex, who is barely mentioned. It’s mostly all about the environment, the higher consciousness and all that. And the diary itself is too stream of consciousness messy and repetitive and theme specialized to be of much interest. So there really is nothing here, but a bizarre vanity project of one person’s quest to have her thoughts published. This is definitely about self gratification. Readers will find none, outside of the fact that at least it has the decency to read quickly. Even supposing this was all entirely perfectly sincere and well meant, it just doesn’t make for a good read.
Though it did occur to me that the only way this might work if the entire thing is a joke, a jest, a performance. A pseudoconfessional stream of consciousness epistolary concoction. An experiment. It still wouldn’t be a good read, but it would at least be original and conceptually intriguing. But as is…total waste of time. Thanks Netgalley.

Clare green is a brave woman who opened up her personal journals in an attempt to help others understand not only the workings of her brain, but others with OCD/ Autism as well. Unfortunately for me, it didn’t happen. I have first hand experience having a sibling with OCD/ASD and truly thought I would be able to relate, but the entries are just all over the place. I felt like I had no idea who Clare was outside of her ramblings. I wished I knew what her hobbies were, or more about her relationship with her ex Tom, or her parents. She referenced her job a few times as well but never said what she did (or maybe I missed it.) I felt as though this collection of entries would read better if I had a better idea of Clare to relate to. The repetition got old, and I found it hard to read in many parts. As a whole it lacked the depth and personal details needed for me to enjoy this book.