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Running with Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Augusten Burroughs Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Format: Movie Tie-In Published: 2006-09-05 ISBN: 0312425414 Number of pages: 336 Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of Running with Scissors: A MemoirBook Review: A well written book Summary: 5 Stars
Running with Scissors is an unbelievable story. Nevertheless, it is a true story and it is written by the person who could tell it best - the person who lived the story. Running with Scissors is the memoirs of Augusten Burroughs who has authored other books like Dry, Magical Thinking, Possible Side Effects, Sellevision etc. Running with Scissors was #1 on the Newyork Times Bestseller list and stayed on the list for two and a half consecutive years. The book was made into a movie by the same name by director Ryan Murphy who also wrote the screenplay. The movie has been nominated for the 2007 Golden Globe award. The novel Sellevision is also being made into a movie by director Mark Bozek.
In Running with Scissors, the author tells his story as a teenager who used to be a neat freak but is forced to live in a house where they put turds on the picnic table and consider them as words from God. Augusten is gay, his parents are divorced, his mother is lesbian and she is mentally unstable and is treated by a weird psychiatrist, his boyfriend is a psycho and he lives in a madhouse where he lives an unbelievable life which is portayed in the book in the most humorous way, though dark by its very nature. The very fact that Augusten finds humor in these situations is what makes this book outstanding. I believe that for the same reason he was able to survive through his childhood without losing his sanity - seeing the humor in the dark episodes of one's life. Augusten could have written his story in a different way - the sad story of a child facing abuse from his family and all those around him or a motivational story of a child who suffered hardships and fought his way through. But Augusten chose the best way and if we give it a second thought we can see that the story is really inspiring too. A lot of people, including me, would fare a lot better if we could see the humor in life. But we just see the melancholy, the drama, the losses, the tears - the unfair life.
I would rate this book 5 stars - it is original, humorous, thought provoking, brilliantly written and highly entertaining.
Summary of Running with Scissors: A Memoir The #1 New York Times Bestseller An Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year Now a Major Motion Picture 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. 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. 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
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