Running with Scissors is a wry, darkly comic account of an unconventional childhood. It chronicles the author’s journey into his mother’s abyss—as a new “patient,” he joins the doctor’s oddball family, where rules and boundaries are impossible to detect and where you might find yourself serving as an aid in surgery or enjoying some truly bizarre sexual antics. With his psychoanalyst-father as the ever-present authority figure watching over him, Burroughs is left with only his resourcefulness (and a well-stocked imagination) to cope with this nightmarish world.
Augusten Burroughs is a star narrator for this audio version of Running with Scissors. His easy, conversational style makes the story of his childhood entirely believable. Though his life seemed more like a soap opera than an actual childhood, it’s clear that he survived and became an accomplished writer.
The author of Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs, is a talented writer who uses his talents to describe the most traumatic years of his life in great detail. He spins an engaging and stimulating tale using his strong sense of humor and resilience. Readers cannot put it down until they know what happens next. It is impossible not to relate to his experiences—especially if you are a child teased or misunderstood by others!
About Running with Scissors Book
Running with Scissors is the 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, 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.
While one may feel some sympathy for the author, who had difficulties in school, who was very much a free spirit, who had a pretty awful family, and who had to cope with the ostracism and hostility engendered by his sexual inclination, he does not seem like a person I would want to know. Maybe as an adult, he grew out of some of the more destructive behavior depicted here.
