Running with scissors: a memoir

✍ Scribed by Burroughs, Augusten;Sony Electronic Publishing Company

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Year: 2008;2002
• Tongue: English
• Edition: 1st ed., Sony eBook ed
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This 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, the author 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. It 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.

✦ Subjects

Novelists, American--20th century;Manners and customs;Novelists, American;Homes;Intellectual life;Biography;Electronic books;Biographies;Burroughs, Augusten -- Childhood and youth;Burroughs, Augusten -- Homes and haunts -- Massachusetts -- Amherst;Burroughs, Augusten;Novelists, American -- 20th century -- Biography;Amherst (Mass.) -- Social life and customs;Amherst (Mass.) -- Intellectual life;Massachusetts -- Amherst