Sunday, September 13, 2009

Book 74: Running With Scissors

Running With Scissors is a memoir by Augusten Burroughs. It's in the same vein as The Glass Castle: the writer had a horrible childhood but basically turned out okay as an adult.

I liked the humor of the beginning, and then the middle became too awful. I think the detailed description of a 14-year old losing his virginity non-consensually to a pedophile was just too much for me. Aside from that section, I could endure that Burroughs's parents abandoned him, and that he faked a suicide attempt just to get out of going to school (with the help and advice of his doctor), that he was surrounded by insanity and fortune-telling poop.

He tells his story with humor and from the perspective of having made it out alive. He can laugh at the past, and we can laugh with him (at least some of the time), because he escaped.

Probably not for sensitive readers.

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