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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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as of 11/23/2009 05:14 MST details
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Seller: green_earth_books
Rating:  860 reviews
Sales Rank: 3105
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 3 x 1.1
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 500
 highly recommend!! November 7, 2009
Jacob Reibel (USA)
One of my favorite books of all time. Great writing style and humor.
 An unremarkable book October 30, 2009
aproductofsociety
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Augusten Burroughs has gotten a lot of mileage out of this book, but I'm not wild about it. There are many ways to react to a terrible childhood, and learning to laugh at oneself and at the insanity of one's relatives is a valid reaction. But this book is so determinedly focused on the laughable elements of a harrowing childhood that it feels very forced. As we plod through humorous vignette after humorous vignette, the wackiness wears quite thin. It gets repetitive. Also, it feels dishonest because I doubt the younger Augusten felt so consistently and safely glib about his very difficult experiences. What was it REALLY like, I wonder, to cope with all this at such a tender age? The author rarely lets his guard down, preferring the whimsical to the deep or introspective. Of course, you could say that a book that focused on the terrible aspects of a terrible childhood portrayed darkly would not sell. And that might be true... but it feels like the book is simply mining a terrible childhood for commercial gain. That's a sad conclusion to reach, and a darker feeling I would get from a really honest and open examination of the feelings this kid actually had.
 BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN AND YET HORRIBLY SHOCKING October 29, 2009
Barbara Lane (Sydney Australia)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you think you have had a messed up childhood, after reading this book, yours would be so easy in comparison. Augusten Burroughs, in his memoir, tells us about his twisted nightmare of an upbringing, by his mother, her psychiatrist, and the doctor's weird family.This story would leave anyone else grabbing their knees, bending over at times and feeling sick!!! Burroughs manages to tell the story with wit and humour, and honesty. We all have childhood memories we like to keep hidden, but I give Burroughs a lot of credit for exposing his abused childhood so candidly. It's amazing that his life turned out so well after such an abused upbringing. There are graphic homosexual scenes in this story of a very young teen and his lover who is 33 years old.
Beautifully written and yet horribly shocking and disgusting at times. It is a difficult book to listen to, but one you will find yourself racing through to the finish line.
 Running with Scissors October 16, 2009
SAW
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
What a piece of trash! It might be somewhat humorous if it was fiction but the fact that it's true makes it just plain sick. Save your time and money.
True-to-life Childhood October 6, 2009
Michelle V. Mcentire (Salt Lake City, Utah)
Augusten Burroughs pulls no punches in this honest look at life as he knew it as a pre-teen and teenage boy. His life takes a turn for the crazy when he and his mother become heavily involved with the Finch Family, but he doesn't blame them for ruining his life. Rather, he merely states his various relationships with the family as matter-of-fact. The author writes simply and the book is easy to read. I really enjoyed it.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 500
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