Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Running with Scissors: A Memoir (edition 2006)by Augusten Burroughs
Work InformationRunning with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Family Drama (8) » 22 more Page Turners (52) Autodidacts (2) Books Read in 2012 (44) One Book, Many Authors (406) Florida (31) Books Read in 2005 (46) Books Tagged Abuse (62) Teens (10) Unread books (543) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Very bizarre memoir. Very dysfunctional childhood. Mother gave guardianship to her psychiatrist when he was 13. Now we know what would happen if a Jackie Collins novel mated with a Stephen King novel and the story was made into a National Lampoon movie. This is a bizarre story of two dysfunctional families that is very-well written and oddly funny. It's a testament to human resilience that the author didn't grow up to be a serial killer.
You will either love Running With Scissors or you will hate it. I loved it. OK, there are tedious passages, when you feel Burroughs is doing the writerly equivalent of adding extra stuffing to a perfectly comfortable beanbag. But it is impossible not to laugh at all the jokes; to admire the sardonic, fetid tone; to wonder, slack-jawed and agog, at the sheer looniness of the vista he conjures up. The book, which promotes visceral responses (of laughter, wincing, retching) on nearly every page, contains the kind of scenes that are often called harrowing but which are also plainly funny and rich with child's-eye details of adults who have gone off the rails. Belongs to SeriesIs contained inHas the adaptationHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
This is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, the author found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules, there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs. It is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny, but above all, it chronicles an ordinary boy's survival under the most extraordinary circumstances. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |