BOOK REVIEW: Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

This memoir has been recommended to me many times but I'd somehow never got around to reading it.

Well, I'm glad I finally did. Glad and a little bit freaked out... It's the tale of Burroughs's childhood and, as it's a real life story, I'm sure I shouldn't have found it so entertaining and funny. His mother (a psychologically-unhinged poet) left his alcoholic father and proceeded to get Augusten adopted by her therapist. Unfortunately, he turns out to be a nutter who may have 'looked like Santa Claus' but was the bizarre patriarch of an incredibly dysfunctional family.

Effectively abandoned by his mother, Augusten makes the best of living in his new - disgustingly filthy - home, forming friendships with his adopted siblings and dreaming of the day he will open a hair salon. 

There are no rules in the house; no cleaning, no school and no boundaries. When things get boring, there's an old electroshock machine under the stairs to play with or a handful of new pills to try.

While the material is like a surreal misery memoir, Burroughs's dry wit and sardonic delivery transforms it into something hilarious, shocking and highly addictive.

 

Comments

[Linda]

I just finished Dry and I can't wait to read Running With Scissors. His stories are so terrible but the way he writes them you can't help but laugh.

[Diane]

I wanted to read this for a long time, then I read something that discredited his version of events quite a bit. (The family he wrote about sued him for libel and defamation, and his publishers agreed to stop describing it as memoir, or something.) So now, I don't know...

[SarahP]

Hi Linda... You enjoyed Dry? I will try that one next, then! Diane - that is interesting. Not sure whether it makes it less 'valid' as a piece of work (all memory is subjective yadda yadda) and, somehow, it makes me feel less guilty about enjoying it!

[Diane]

Hi Sarah, no, maybe not less valid, but as someone who loves memoir and writes a lot of first-person stuff, I'd rather know how much effort they've made to verify things/stick to what they believe to be true. I want people to believe some writers are telling the truth! :)

I read an extract of Dry a few years ago, and it was really good. I wanted to know more, not sure why I didn't read on, really...