Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs is a memoir. This book follows Augusten from when he is a little boy up Intel he is almost 20 years old. Burroughs has also written Dry, another memoir, Possible Side Effects, Sellevision, and many more. His books often have darker parts to them and are slightly twisted, like this one. This book really gets across how bad life can get and how you often don’t have control of the things going on around you.

The memoir starts off when Augusten is five years old. He grew up with an alcoholic father and his mother who is a poet. As his mother gets older she gets more and more crazy. His parents separate and his mother finds comfort in a therapist soon after that Augusten is forced to go and live with his mother’s therapist Dr. Finch and his crazy family. Soon he meets the doctor’s oldest son who is 33 years old, and they become a couple but it is in no way a healthy relationship. The doctors house is falling apart it has holes in the celling, the stairs seem as if you will fall through them, the kitchen has piles of dirty dishes, cockroaches living in the wall and a Christmas tree that stays up all year. No matter who Augusten is living with he is living in bad conditions.

               

This book is on the darker side of things. It does have some humorous parts to it but overall it is a dark story of what it was like to grow up with a manic mother and have a crazy therapist as your legal guardian. However it is a very good read that you can’t put down. The stories that he tells of him and his family members is so entertain and changes constantly, you can’t get bored with it. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read things that are more realistic and don’t have happy fairy tale endings. 

Book Review by Calla L.