Running with Scissors
Augusten Burroughs, 2002
Memoir & biography Graphic novels & humour
A memoir of a wildly unstable childhood, told with a child's dread and a survivor's deadpan comic timing. A child's-eye view of chaos, told with deadpan wit, quick scenes, and an undercurrent of dread.
Feels like dread, tenderness and wonder. About family, memory and identity.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy memoirs that find dark comedy in messy family life and a voice that stays wry under pressure. The instability is relentless and some scenes are blunt, so it may not suit you if you want a gentler, more contained childhood memoir.
Why read it
It shows how humour can be a survival tool when the adults around you are unreliable, and the short, sharp scenes make it easy to keep going.
A page from the book
What a parent's accent does to the shape of a sentence.
My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron. Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl. Augusten Burroughs.Burroughs worked in advertising in New York and San Francisco before publishing Running with Scissors; the memoir was adapted into a 2006 film.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Running with Scissors for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy memoirs that find dark comedy in messy family life and a voice that stays wry under pressure. The instability is relentless and some scenes are blunt, so it may not suit you if you want a gentler, more contained childhood memoir.
- What is Running with Scissors like?
- A child's-eye view of chaos, told with deadpan wit, quick scenes, and an undercurrent of dread. Feels like dread, tenderness and wonder. About family, memory and identity.
- What should I read after Running with Scissors?
- If you liked Running with Scissors, try Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs), Me (Katharine Hepburn) and Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris).
A taste of the feed
A man writes a letter that is mostly a knife, and exactly correct about the sums.
Your income has always been ample, and you never ought to have borrowed any money, and Mary Towle did a great wrong in lending you any money. My opinion of you is the same as it always has been—that you are an extravagant, deceitful, dishonest, worthless person. You have squandered thousands of dollars and left your honest debts unpaid. But I do not think you are capable of comprehending the mistakes that you have made. Now that you are paying up Mary Towle, how would it do to pay the various other accounts that you owe?
Me · Katharine Hepburn
What New York couples stay together for, when the children aren't the reason.
In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment.
Me Talk Pretty One Day · David Sedaris
What the anger is doing for you, and what it spares you.
I’m becoming an angry person with no tolerance for anyone. I’m aware of this shift and yet have no desire to change it. If anything, I want it. It’s armor. It’s easier to be angry than to feel to pain underneath it.
I'm Glad My Mom Died · Jennette McCurdy
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