Running with Scissors: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Augusten Burroughs
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  822 reviews
Sales Rank: 1962
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0312938853
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312938857
Publication Date: August 29, 2006
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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: Read 817 more reviews...
 Could anyone's life BE any stranger!!! June 4, 2004
14 out of 14 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
16 out of 17 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.
One of the BEST April 7, 2004
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Callie Sawyer, fan of Non Fiction,
Running With Scissors is a remarkable book within the memoir/biography/abuse genre. The book is all telling and yet there is a rare look at the abuse suffered with dignity and at times humor. I have read many such books. Running with Scissors compares easily to that of 'Nightmares Echo' (agree with prior reviewer),also due to the details of the book I compare it to Dry,The Privilege Of Youth, and A Million Little Pieces. In each of the afore-mentioned books you find a compelling story, sometimes sad, and sometimes they laugh within themselves at the 'luck of the draw' they got from childhood on. Yet, they never give up the fight for courage and determination.
I agree with the Washington Post -- it is spectacular! July 17, 2002
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
rarely is a book this funny awarded the critical acclaim of a more demure author who treads the well-worn path of literature. Burroughs is strikingly original, yet adds a patina of poignancy and tenderness to his work that amazes as well as delights. from the very first story "Something Isn't Right," he hooks you with his storytelling ability and attention to detail. His is the most compelling memoir I've read in years. The critics agree: RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is a masterpiece, and a darkly comic coup. Most highly recommended.
Wickedly funny, but EXTREMELY disturbing! August 5, 2006
9 out of 10 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!
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