Running with Scissors: A Memoir

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 like June Cleaver. Mom dumps Augusten at the home of her warped therapist whose family brings to mind a barely saner Addams family. Burroughs describes a series of incidents that colored his life, but the book also contains a definite understory of the boredom that comes from a life with no rules or obligations, including no school.

The movie has the extra intensity of an excellent cast, including Annette Benning, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Chenoweth, Jill Clayburgh, and Gwyneth Paltrow and lacks some of the grossness of the book which makes the movie easier to take. Still it's an interesting story, both funny and grim with a writing style that makes it compelling.

the book was a rambling and disconnected series of events. I live near where the story took place and was very disappointed with the entire story. The movie was hysterical,but i don't believe that the author meant to write it in that context.

Augusten Burroughs showed me pain comes in all forms of lies, truth and laughter. It's all connected and somebody always ends up paying a price.

I first read this memoir when it was published in 2002. Now that other memoirists are rapidly adding their voices to Burroughs' amazing "come clean until it hurts" style of tell-all, I wanted to revisit this modern classic. If you have not read the book, but only seen the movie, don't think you can begin to get a taste of what Burroughs is all about from that film adaptation. Burroughs' laugh-out-loud angst can really only be appreciated on the page, and he must be read to be fully appreciated.

This book, about a boy brought up by a silent, angry father and a mad, narcissistic mother until he is abruptly given away to the mother's insane psychiatrist and his whacked-out family, is a jaw-dropping page-turner. That the boy even grows up to write this memoir is a miracle, in light of the sex, drugs and weirdness he is subjected to over the course of his boyhood.

This is a must-read book, and should be a permanent fixture in any well-stocked home library.

This is a funny, at times laugh-out-loud hilarious book. It's also really interesting and offbeat. You'll find yourself reading one more chapter than you wanted to, and then another and another before you go to bed. It is at times disturbing and appalling, but that's just life. His funniest book, though is clearly Magical Thinking: True Stories