Book Review: Running With Scissors.

This book is a memoir of the personal writings of Augusten Burroughs, written about the trials and tribulations he faced growing up. It was referred to me from a friend. This is not the sort of book I would usually pick up on my own. However, with that being said, this was an extraordinary book. Things happened to this child that some of us could only imagine, and then some us imagining them would be mortified. How this boy withstood all he went through, and went on to become a successful author, well that is a sign of true mental illness.


Auguesten was born to two equally insane parents, though one was clinically insane and the other liquidly insane, he still only had himself really, and his goals of becoming a TV doctor.
After a nasty divorce Augusten's father, for lack of better definition, cuts off all contact. His mother has decided her years of oppression are over and she is finally free, with this revelation she gives guardianship of her son over to her ' shrink ', Dr. Finch, and Augusten is now being raised by a family more crazy than his original.
Deciding he has been gay his whole life, and his first true relationship is a tumbleweed romance with a man almost twenty years his senior, Augusten is locked away and trapped,inside himself, even though he truly has more freedom than he could ever ask for.
After learning more secrets than he knows what to do with, feeling defeated over and over, and loving a family that's not really his, he still has his sights set for New York city, yet now he wants to become a writer. After all it's in his blood, his mother was a writer.... his mother was also insane.

** This book does contain some content that I would personally not recommend for anyone under the age of sixteen, given that in most states, sixteen is the legal age of consent.