Book details

Running with Scissors

A Memoir

Author: Augusten Burroughs

Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors

About This Book

The runaway national bestseller now becomes a motion picture starring Annette Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow, directed by Ryan Murphy
Page Count
288
On Sale
04/01/2010

Book Details

The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir from Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors, now a Major Motion Picture!

Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules, there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs....

Running with Scissors is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny. But above all, it chronicles an ordinary boy's survival under the most extraordinary circumstances.

Imprint Publisher

St. Martin's Press

ISBN

9781429902526

Reading Guide

In The News

“I just finished reading the most amazing book. Running with Scissors is hilarious, freaky-deaky, berserk, controlled, transcendent, touching, affectionate, vengeful, all-embracing....It makes a good run at blowing every other [memoir] out of the water.” —Carolyn See, The Washington Post

“Funny and rich with child's eye details of adults who have gone off the rails.” —The New York Times Book Review

“It is as funny as it is twisted.” —GQ

“A hilarious and horrifying memoir.” —Los Angeles Times

“Harrowing and hilarious. I haven't laughed this much since David Sedaris's last book.” —Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy

Running with Scissors is a cut above...compelling...the book celebrates Burroughs' resilient, upbeat spirit, which helps him surmount one of the weirder childhoods on record.” —USA Today

“The anecdotes can be so flippant, and so insanely funny (quite literally), that the effect is that of a William Burroughs situation comedy.” —The New York Times

“Burroughs defies the 'woe is me' stigma of modern memoir with a raucous recounting of his loony teenage years.” —Entertainment Weekly

“I was reminded of Roald Dahl's Boy and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Augusten Burroughs has produced a memoir that's funny and sharp but also humane, as charming as it is revealing.” —Kurt Andersen, author of Turn of the Century

“A memoir that is both horrifying and mordantly funny.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Burroughs has memorialized his bizarre childhood showing off a dark wit that often rivals that of David Sedaris--while telling a true story that would make even Sedaris cringe.” —New York Magazine

“Burroughs tempers the pathos with sharp riotous humor... Edgier, but reminiscent of Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, this is a survival story readers won't forget.” —Booklist

About the Creators

Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors
Running with Scissors
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