Running with Scissors | Review

Running with Scissors is a shocking memoir of Augusten Burroughs' adolescent years. At a young age, Augusten's mentally-ill mother sends him to live with her strange psychiatrist whose own wife refers to him as "the doctor". From age 13 to 15, while "in the doctor's care" (I use this term facetiously as he is not cared for at all) Augusten has a sexual relationship with the doctor's 33-year-old adopted son. An array of entirely bizarre events, including the doctor's belief that God communicates to him through his feces, make life for Augusten anything but normal.

I found this book disturbing yet fascinating. One of the doctor's daughters, Hope, believes her cat is sick, which leads her to lock it in an overturned laundry basket for a total of four days until it dies. While I dislike cats immensely, I was upset by the normalcy of the event to all members of the doctors' family. Running with Scissors was a relatively quick read for me, one which I was compelled to continue reading. The writing itself and the plot were easy to follow. I recommend the novel to any whose curiosity is peaked by the snippet above.

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I give this book a rating of 8/10 and here’s why:

Text: The story is well-written and from a most personal perspective, is humourous while not comical.

Dialogue: The dialogue is believable, though I wonder how accurate in the sense that this memoir was written years after the actual events.

Plot: This unconventional coming of age story draws in readers as they, like Augusten, remain ever hopeful for change as he manages to live through difficulty upon difficulty.

Characters: As the protagonist himself, Burroughs, creates a "character" whose eternal hope for his mother to be "normal" is heart-breaking.