Point of View

Kissing Doorknobs is told by Tara Sullivan, a young girl who has obsessive compulsive disorder. She describes her condition as a series of nonsensical imperatives that she feels compelled to complete, whether it is repeating Step on a crack, break your mother's back, counting sidewalk cracks, praying, or performing rituals. She is slightly humorous and slightly pathetic as she describes her family's reaction to these rituals, and she is even sympathetic with her parents' exasperation since she is exasperated herself. Nonetheless, she thinks of herself as innocent in terms of these habits and wishes she could get them to stop. The story comes from her beleaguered position. She is a slightly self-deprecatory narrator, but her self-deprecatory tone comes from her ignorance of her own condition.

Setting

This book is set in an ordinary house in a town with a school. The physical setting is not the...