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Running with Scissors: A Memoir |  | Author: Augusten Burroughs
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Seller: green_earth_books
Rating:  877 reviews
Sales Rank: 7681
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 1
ISBN: 0312938853
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312938857
ASIN: 0312938853
Publication Date: August 29, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, Running with Scissors, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, glass-top coffee table that he longs to bring home. "I knew I could hide the chip by fanning a display of magazines on the surface, like in a doctor's office," he writes, "And it certainly wouldn't be dirty after I polished it with Windex for three hours." There were certainly numerous chips in the childhood Burroughs describes: an alcoholic father, an unstable mother who gives him up for adoption to her therapist, and an adolescence spent as part of the therapist's eccentric extended family, gobbling prescription meds and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and a pedophile who lives in a shed out back. But just as he dreamed of doing with that old table, Burroughs employs a vigorous program of decoration and fervent polishing to a life that many would have simply thrown in a landfill. Despite her abandonment, he never gives up on his increasingly unbalanced mother. And rather than despair about his lot, he glamorizes it: planning a "beauty empire" and performing an a capella version of "You Light Up My Life" at a local mental ward. Burroughs's perspective achieves a crucial balance for a memoir: emotional but not self-involved, observant but not clinical, funny but not deliberately comic. And it's ultimately a feel-good story: as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs's survivor mentality will guide him through and that the coffee table will be salvaged after all. --John Moe
Product Description
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year-round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull, an electroshock therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing, and bestselling account of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances…
Running with Scissors Acknowledgments
Gratitude doesn’t begin to describe it: Jennifer Enderlin, Christopher Schelling, John Murphy, Gregg Sullivan, Kim Cardascia, Michael Storrings, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press. Thank you: Lawrence David, Suzanne Finnamore, Robert Rodi, Bret Easton Ellis, Jon Pepoon, Lee Lodes, Jeff Soares, Kevin Weidenbacher, Lynda Pearson, Lona Walburn, Lori Greenburg, John DePretis, and Sheila Cobb. I would also like to express my appreciation to my mother and father for, no matter how inadvertently, giving me such a memorable childhood. Additionally, I would like to thank the real-life members of the family portrayed in this book for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own. I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors. Most of all, I would like to thank my brother for demonstrating, by example, the importance of being wholly unique.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 877
 Could anyone's life BE any stranger!!! June 4, 2004
Karen Kirsch (Novi, MI United States)
22 out of 23 found this review helpful
I saw the cover and chuckled, thinking, aw, this will be a cute story. My God, how wrong was I? Augusten Burroughs writes a memoir of his young years growing up in not only one, but two totally disfunctional households. His parents despise each other and you begin to wonder on which page one might kill the other.
Mom is totally dependent on her psychiatrist, spending endless hours with him. He is portrayed as a Santa Claus-type person...
a right jolly old elf. When Augusten is left to stay with psychiatrist and family, we are plunged into a household that goes WAY beyond bizarre! You really have to read it to believe it. I honestly looked at his picture on the back cover at least
20 times while reading the book wondering how this guy could look so normal after what he had been through!
This is one mind-blowing read. I was so intrigued by his story that I went on NPR's web-site to listen to his interviews.
Gosh, he sounds so grounded...and yet how could it be?
Brilliant. June 22, 2002
18 out of 21 found this review helpful
...and oh so funny.
This is one of those memoirs that compels you to read "just one more chapter" until you find you've finished the entire book while the work you meant to do piles up, suddenly unimportant. I have not laughed this hard since I read Naked by David Sedaris. The details alone catapult one back into the sordid seventies and eighties, while the characters leap off the page in all their gruesomely hilarious glory. I don't think I've ever read anything like this - Burroughs is a true original, and deftly avoids sentimentality or the urge to make his characters sympathetic. It's a wonderful book. I cannot wait to see what this young genius thinks of next. Highly recommended, and hugely entertaining.
Wickedly funny, but EXTREMELY disturbing! August 5, 2006
Melissa Niksic (Chicago, IL United States)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
"Running with Scissors" is one of the most entertaining books I've read in a long time. The fact that this book is a memoir is absolutely horrifying to me...I cannot believe all this stuff actually HAPPENED! Then again, the characters and events depicted in the book are so outlandish that even the best of writers would have a hard time making them up.
Basically, this memoir tells the true story of how author Augusten Burroughs spent the latter part of his childhood. Augusten's father abandons him and leaves him all alone with his psychotic mother, Deirdre, who seeks counsel from Dr. Finch, a quirky psychiatrist who bears a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. To say that Dr. Finch's methods are unconventional would be an understatement. The man is OUT OF HIS MIND! He embraces and encourages his patient's hostile psychotic episodes, allows his most unstable patients to move in with him, and even convinces Augusten to stage a suicide attempt to avoid going to school. Then there's the rest of the Finch family, and they're all as crazy as their patriarch. At first Augusten is completely turned off by the Finch clan, but he eventually warms up to them because they seem to be a better alternative than his crazy mother (which isn't saying much). Deirdre shocks Augusten turning over her legal parental guardianship to Dr. Finch, and Augusten moves into a house where rules don't exist and adolescents are encouraged to enter into homosexual sexual relationships with 30-year-old adults...SERIOUSLY!
As horrifying as this whole experience is, Burroughs presents the whole story with a very dry sense of humor that kept me laughing with each turn of the page. This is an amazing story that will keep you engaged from the very beginning, and it also happens to be incredibly well-written. "Running with Scissors" is a must-read for everyone!
What do you want to be, when YOU grow up September 14, 2003
Michael Allison (Layton, UT United States)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
I read this book in two sittings. When I read the notes, I wanted it to be a biography, not fiction, well I must not have read close enough. Because it is as real as it is troubling and hilarious. Augusten Burrough's boyhood unraveled for all to see. I was impressed by not only the story, which is a classic, but Burroughs style and pacing. For all the heavy topics, he seems to be able to write it as he experienced it -- a troubled maybe, but seemingly optimistic, boy. From the beginning you identify with Burroughs. He brings out those generic memories long forgotten, like waiting for dad to get home and hearing the gravel pop under the wheels of the tires. But within that you start to sense a pattern of disturbance. And even if you can't identify with his fixation for shiny objects and desire to market hair products, or play a doctor on TV. You can identify with the fear and uncertainty of a young boy growing up without the normal anchors and boundaries. Uncertain about himself, his future and his family. This is a heroic work. It is sad and painful at times but up beat and uplfiting in the end. It is not without uncertainty and sorrow, but peppered also with humor and insight. In short it is a damn good slice of a boy's life.
I guess I really am normal August 12, 2002
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
You know, everyone complains about how strange their families are, and I'm no exception. My family has stories, but after reading this, I guess I really am normal. ... Although the subject matter is fairly disturbing, I think the book is ultimately uplifting and humorous. Burroughs uses dark humor to make his subject matter easier to handle, but he really does show how horrible and stifling his childhood was. The characters are very developed, and the author is extremely insightful and reflective. However, if you don't like dealing with graphic sexuality, I would recommend not reading this. If, on the other hand, that doesn't really bother you, you'll read this in about 2 or 3 days.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 877
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