Running with Scissors: A Memoir
by: Augusten Burroughs
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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:
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.
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
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- Wonderful read for good laughs
A little awkward during some sections, but funny/ witty throughout its entirety. If you like reading about things that seem crazy, this is a MUST read for you.
Rating: 
- ?
talk about WEIRD childhood....reading this book left me blank....i don't know if i hate it or love it.....this is weird because i usually feel strongly one way or another....i guess that what makes this book controversial....i am going to watch the movie and see how the director "sees" the book.....i am sure it will be interesting to watch.
Rating: 
- A Childhood Undesired:A Review of Running with Scissors
A boy sits and watches his mother get ready for a night out.The smells remind him of abandonment.Her actions fill him with jealousy.The boy needs some control over his life and the only things he can grasp are his physical appearance.Panicking if a hair is out of place and disgusted if he notices a stain on his clothes. He feels comfort in knowing he determines is outer presence, for the inner part of him is slowly being broken.Life as he knows it is soon going to be changed forever.This ... Read More
Rating: - A humorous romp through an unusual childhood
Running With Scissors is an outstanding book. It's laugh-out-loud hilarious, often shocking and, at times, sad. There are enough unusual surprises in the book that I don't want to ruin them for you by giving away plot lines. Suffice to say, there's twists and turns along the way that are stranger than fiction.
A similar book I enjoyed was When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Rating: - Liked the Movie Better
By Valley Gay Press Book Reviewer Liz Bradbury (Author of Angel Food and Devil Dogs - A Maggie Gale Mystery)
The movie got dozens of poor reviews at Amazon, where readers of the book insisted the book was so much better. I happened to like the movie so I figured the book would be great. It was good, but I liked the movie better.
The book, an autobiographical work that describes Augusten Burroughs' bizarre adolescence, features a mother that is so dysfunctional, Joan Crawford seems ... Read More
- Wonderful read for good laughsA little awkward during some sections, but funny/ witty throughout its entirety. If you like reading about things that seem crazy, this is a MUST read for you.
- ?talk about WEIRD childhood....reading this book left me blank....i don't know if i hate it or love it.....this is weird because i usually feel strongly one way or another....i guess that what makes this book controversial....i am going to watch the movie and see how the director "sees" the book.....i am sure it will be interesting to watch.
- A Childhood Undesired:A Review of Running with ScissorsA boy sits and watches his mother get ready for a night out.The smells remind him of abandonment.Her actions fill him with jealousy.The boy needs some control over his life and the only things he can grasp are his physical appearance.Panicking if a hair is out of place and disgusted if he notices a stain on his clothes. He feels comfort in knowing he determines is outer presence, for the inner part of him is slowly being broken.Life as he knows it is soon going to be changed forever.This ... Read More
- A humorous romp through an unusual childhoodRunning With Scissors is an outstanding book. It's laugh-out-loud hilarious, often shocking and, at times, sad. There are enough unusual surprises in the book that I don't want to ruin them for you by giving away plot lines. Suffice to say, there's twists and turns along the way that are stranger than fiction.
A similar book I enjoyed was When You Are Engulfed in Flames
- Liked the Movie BetterBy Valley Gay Press Book Reviewer Liz Bradbury (Author of Angel Food and Devil Dogs - A Maggie Gale Mystery)
The movie got dozens of poor reviews at Amazon, where readers of the book insisted the book was so much better. I happened to like the movie so I figured the book would be great. It was good, but I liked the movie better.
The book, an autobiographical work that describes Augusten Burroughs' bizarre adolescence, features a mother that is so dysfunctional, Joan Crawford seems ... Read More
