One of my favorite authors is Augusten Burroughs. I was fairly young the first time I read his memoir, Running with Scissors, and after finishing it I knew I had to read more of his books. I have a small collection of them, and a few more that I still need to add. It has been a long time since I read one of his books, so I thought it was time to re-read and write about his first autobiographical work.
The chapters aren’t numbered, they all have unique titles. Being a child was very different when Augusten grew up, that being the late 1960s into the 1970s. You were only required to go to school until the age of 16, it was easy to skip class, and everything seemed to be a lot less strict than it is now. Today, you absolutely would not see a 13 year old boy on a public transport bus by himself and think, oh, that’s normal, and this is probably the least concerning thing about Augustens childhood. It is incredible that child services or the police were never called on behalf of the author, because so many unusual and alarming things happened to Augusten that I find it hard to believe that no one ever noticed.
This memoir is full of strange and distrubed characters, from the author’s alcoholic father, to his mothers mad psychiatrist. If you enjoy a crude writing style, he’s a very honest writer; nothing is sugar coated, and don’t mind if things get a little gross, definitely read this. After finishing it, you will absolutely be interested in reading the rest of Burroughs novels.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 