Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

[Bluegill]

I just finished reading Running With Scissors and thought I'd recommend it. Very fun book.

It's a very fast read, and very, very funny. It's about a boy whose mother is mentally ill and whose father is an alcoholic. He ends up living with his psychiatrist's family, and they are just as nuts as his own family. And I mean, nuts. Wayyyyy out there. And it's a TRUE STORY! That makes it comically disturbing, and disturbingly comic.

 

[Hexxenhammer]

I just finished reading Running With Scissors and thought I'd recommend it. Very fun book.

It's a very fast read, and very, very funny. It's about a boy whose mother is mentally ill and whose father is an alcoholic. He ends up living with his psychiatrist's family, and they are just as nuts as his own family. And I mean, nuts. Wayyyyy out there. And it's a TRUE STORY! That makes it comically disturbing, and disturbingly comic.

I haven't read anything of his, but he was just in the Twin Cities and on NPR a whole bunch talking about his life and books. Seemed very funny.

 

[headscratcher4]

Different take: the book is very good. Highly recommend it. However, though it is quite funny (he is a good writer), it is also a very sad, scary story. By this I mean, the kid was essentially abandoned by his parents to be raised as nuts. He's lucky to be alive and functional. There is a lot of child abuse and child molestation in this book -- Burroughs is essentially raped by an older man (I say essentially, 'cause he was significantly under age at the time) in the household.

Anyway, it is an amazing story of survival and the ability of someone to save themselves when the adults around them turn out to be criminally negligent....

Also, I think that Buroughs had to be funny because if you couldn't laugh at yourself and the situation he found himself in, you'd probably try killing yourself...I know that he had a drinking/drug problem for many years...completely understandable once you've read his story.

 

[ASRomatifoso]

It is a very funny book and very enjoyable. How much is true, I don't know. Some of it seems so fantastickal that I find it hard to believe. Dry is his follow-up. You should check it out, very good book, also.

 

[Bluegill]

(snip)
Anyway, it is an amazing story of survival and the ability of someone to save themselves when the adults around them turn out to be criminally negligent....

Also, I think that Buroughs had to be funny because if you couldn't laugh at yourself and the situation he found himself in, you'd probably try killing yourself...
(snip)

Yes, it is horrifying. The story could have easily been told in another voice--that of a tragic victim. Many of the situations were so awful that I felt like I had to either laugh or shut the book and stop reading it for good. But Burroughs obviously knew this, to, and knew that the way he apparently handled it in real life was the way he had to direct the reader to handle it. But, yeah. It's not a book for the squeamish.