Running with Scissors: A Memoir

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars | 4,886 ratings

Price: 13.12

Last update: 11-11-2024


About this item

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 psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age 12, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor.

The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules, there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs....

Running with Scissors is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny. But above all, it chronicles 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.


Top reviews from the United States

Donna Hill
5.0 out of 5 stars Weird and Wonderful Memoir
Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2011
The reviews of this book piqued my interest and curiosity but scared me so much that I didn't know just how I would react to this story of a bizarre childhood.

Well! I don't feel sullied by the experience and I swallowed this book whole (read it in one session of six and a half hours with a dinner break--no, I didn't read it while eating). Burroughs is a masterful storyteller and I believed his story. As so many others have said, "Most of this stuff was just too weird to have been made up." Truth is stranger than fiction and this is certainly the case here.

If you are turned off by explicit sex, foul language, and bathroom hijinks, don't read it. If you sincerely want to know how a young impressionable boy survived living with two dysfunctional families, coming out of it sane and productive with a great sense of humor and edgy style of writing, this is for you! I'm not a jaded teen or 20-something--I'm a 64-year-old woman, not naive, but feel that I have been somewhat sheltered and I don't like Jerry Springer!

But this book just grabs you and holds onto you--it's so suspenseful--once I started it I pretty much knew that I was in it for the long haul. I like Burroughs. The other characters aren't as likeable. But some are laugh-out-loud funny. Both his real mom and his "surrogate" mom made me laugh. Burroughs knows for sure by the time he is thirteen that he is gay, he has no parental love that he can count on, and is then abandoned by his alcoholic father and mentally-ill mother and forced to live with a cast of characters crazier than the ones in a Dickens novel.

I was disturbed, I laughed, and I found my eyes tearing although I didn't actually have a cry. They were tearing from laughter and from empathy for Burroughs who is just so real. He went into that crazy house an innocent, neat-freak boy and ended up adapting somewhat to a bizarre world. If you have a strong stomach and a curious mind, read his story--he's such an amazing and believable survivor.

Now I have to add some afterthoughts to my review of his mother's book. I believe that so often children's memories are the most trustworthy. I can remember dialogue from my childhood--word for word--just like Burroughs can. A parent who is doing the juggling act of raising children along with emotional and physical abuse and mental breakdowns is not going to be a reliable narrator.

I send my best wishes to Burroughs who lived to tell his tale and I thank him for a roller-coaster ride of a book.
Zee
4.0 out of 5 stars Hmmm
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2006
I know I am weird with my ratings, but 3 stars is to me just fair, while 4 is pretty good, and 5 is amazing. I felt this book fell a little short of pretty good (but I went ahead with 4 stars), yet I still really enjoyed it, and it really haunted me, and that counts for a lot.
I'm sure a lot of people know what the book's about, so here's just a simple recap:
Burroughs' book takes place mainly during the midst of his most disturbed years, starting at age 12, and focuses heavily on his teen years spent among the psychotic and the supposed healers of the psychotic. His father is a bloodless, emotionless stranger, his mother a wanna-be Anne Sexton poetess, dealing with her own psychosis. She's obsessed with her eccentric (I'm being kind here) psychiatrist, Dr. Finch, who looks like Santa Claus , and who also eventually adopts her son when he's about 13. Burroughs' upbringing in the Finch household is strange, to say the least. The other kids, adopted or biological, are all raised with that sort of hippie, experimental, Primal Scream kind of therapy way, where they are 'free' of obligation, encouraged to express their anger all too freely, not go to school, sleep with whoever, and yet still are extremely troubled since they're offered no discipline or guidance.
And there's a whole lot more to it, but this is kind of the bare bones.
The result is a regular circus, honest-to-goodness freak show of a book/memoir. Is it real? Did Burroughs make it up? I don't know. Some of the stuff was pretty over the top, to say the least. it was fun to read, but also extremely disturbing, and very, very sad.
Burroughs does sometimes truly remind me of Sedaris (who I love) in with his self-depreciating tone and wit, managing to sound very organic and modest sometimes, when he's not noticing himself too much. But in a way, the form of his writing reflects the content, or, in this case, the discontent of a teenager with a certain callousness, being forced to adapt to a really freakish envirnoment. Sometimes his narrative works, sometimes it doesn't. There are times when Burroughs' narrative is smooth, funny, sad, moving along with half-revealed compassion that you sense he's deliberately not putting out too much, lest his own fragile self-image come a-tumbling down. Other times, he trips over his own narrative, and the humor feels a bit heavy-handed and at times strange, almost out of context, like a section was edited out, with only one remaining, lone, odd sentence standing there like a sole survivor in a battle, but I am never sure of what.

I felt like Burroughs alternated often while writing this, either chuckling to him, or crying a little. It's a good, natural tone, but was at times irresponsible. I felt like he could've used more depth. Certain characters could've used a bit more exploration, and he was a bit fickle, using one characters for laughs, and then dropping them to pick up another for his amusement. This got to be a little tedious and also a little lacking in honesty. It was as though he picked out the most weird people to talk about and the second someone stopped being weird, he lost interest in wanting to talk about them in the book. I just don't find that authentic...maybe that's why he's compared to Eggers.

If you're squeamish, don't buy this book. It's pretty graphic in all senses. I've read a number of reviews along the 'EW' vein here, and I feel that, to be fair, Burroughs' sex scenes were not by any mean gratuitous. They DID tie in to the story and the big picture; if they hadn't then it would be meaningless. But we're talking about a troubled young man whose budding sexual identity is vulnerable and new to him (assuming, again, this is a real story). Let's not shoot someone down if they write things we don't like which they've lived through...it's a MEMOIR, so it's not going to be pretty. To say that writing about certain 'gross' things is horrible is ok, given that one doesn't go around passing jugement that this is so awful, they shouldn't write about it. Why NOT? It's a memoir! If you're easily offended, then know your boundaries enough to not cross them with reading this book, and please don't judge someone who was misguided and lost for their own creative attemps at trying to make sense out of their screwed up life, even if the attempts are awkward and not to your liking.

There are also other parts which are extremely graphic...I won't tell you, sorry :-)...but they are pretty gross. However, I was entertained by them. I have a sick sense of humor, and I'm not the only one. And I am really alright with this in myself.
But really, please, if you are easily offended and disgusted, then you will recoil in horror. Even I did (while laughing). So...you're warned.

Overall, a decent book, worth a read. But as far as hype...I don't know. I try not to pay attention to that type of thing. I just pick out what interests me and try to not have any expectations.
Just Elaine
5.0 out of 5 stars Page turner but not for those who are highly insecure, insensitive, or judgemental.
Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2020
As I do with all of the books I buy I open it to a random page and begin to read. If I find that I want to continue, I buy it. It rarely fails me. I was drawn into this book by the descriptive language and great character introductions. I could vividly see them in my mind as I read along about their experiences and lives. I was pretty shocked to discover that the events in this book were based on true events and actual people. That being said, this is worth reading. There are moments of laughter, joy, and disbelief that will pull you in just to make sure everyone is ok. It is definitely a window into how some other people live.

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