Books Running with Scissors: A Memoir
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Rating: - David Sedaris writing Hotel New Hampshire??
I was looking for something "like David Sedaris writing The Hotel New Hampshire" (which was a review included on the back cover on my book). This book isn't it. Both David Sedaris and John Irving can spin a tell a tale that is both disturbing and terribly funny. And now I've spent some time thinking about why Running with Scissors falls far far short of the claim on the back cover. Sedaris and Irving offer characters that have redeeming qualities, no matter how horrible they might be, there is something in them that is quite human. Augusten Burroughs, instead, populates this memoir with paper cut-outs that you don't get to know, understand, relate to, or care about at all. They are not even charicatures. They are nothing but obscene. So there is nothing about the stories to make them funny because there is no humanity in them. The stories and people in them are flat, terrible attempts to perhaps please a voyeuristic audience.

I usually enjoy reading memoirs because I like to see how others have worked things out in their lives, how they understand the course of their lives, the choices they have made, and circumstances they can't control. This book definitely does not offer any of that.

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Rating: - reader beware
yes, I'll agree that Augusten Burrough's is a good writer- that seems to me the only good that came out of his highly dysfunctional upbringing! Had I known I was going to be reading about very graphic homosexual incidents, I would have left the book at the store- disgusting! A lot of people call this book funny... I found it tragically sad- I only wish Augusten would have had a hero that intervened for him, but I suppose that doesn't always happen. :(

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Rating: - Disturbing but enjoyable read
I read this book a few years ago. While dark and heavy, I couldn't put it down. I have to give kudos to the author. Based on his book, if I lived his life I would truly be wicky-in-the-wacky-woo.

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Rating: - Believable? Yes. Humorous? No.
Some reviewers describe this as a book of humor. I wouldn't. Although there are moments of irony and the characters sometimes do or say ludicrous things, as a whole it is not a funny story.

Unfortunately, the story is quite beleivable. Almost 40 years ago several friends of mine became involved with a therapist very similar to the pseudonymous Dr. Finch. They could have been twins. The guy I knew also performed bizarre therapies and brought patients into his household. He claimed his theories were based on "Transactional Analysis" and "re-parenting."

Clients referred to the therapist and his wife as Mom and Dad. They were encouraged to act out their rage, shame or whatever they felt. Some were told to wear diapers and expected to pee and poop in them. Yes, it is a believable story, creepily so. For me, it was deja vu.

Did every event in the book happen exactly as Burroughs describes it? The stories are based on twenty year old memories of an adolescent's understanding of the world around him. Remember that this adolescent was often whacked out on drugs and alchohol.

Any five people who experience the same event will remember it differently. The family Burroughs lived with sued him for libel just before the movie came out. They did not win. The actual doctor did lose his license.

If you don't think there are people as nutty as these roaming around, you need to get out a little more.