two readings in the space of less than six months. I had not been as excited about an author long ago.
My discovery Running with Scissors and Augusten Burroughs was the result of a total coincidence. One day by reading the biography of Ryan Murphy, who had managed to fascinate me with Nip / Tuck, I realized he had made a film, never released in theaters in France. Yet, with a dream cast and a production signed Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston, the UFO had everything to be a real success. Its totally fascinated watching me and then I needed to know more.
I learned well the existence of Augusten and I immediately began to devour all of his work at a fast pace. Running With Scissors was going to be the first in the list and also probably the most shocking.
Augusten Burroughs tells us there's essentially chaotic adolescence in the '70s with a talent tinged with tenderness and humor unmatched. Surrounded by an absent father and an alcoholic who seems to give him any attention (their only business communications is to take their garbage to the dump) and a mother completely narcissistic poet who is interested in him only intermittently, because that it sends back an image of herself flattering, young Augusten is struggling to find its place. Obviously, his parents have sex extremely confrontational and violent. His mother also suffers from serious mental illness and is regularly subjected to terrible psychotic episodes.
To survive, Augusten gradually develops a unique personality and is related to some things he was able to check in daily dreary and unhappy (his hair and the sparkle of her jewelry, for example). Anyway, so it has no friends (he wrote have been two in the past, but his mother had "upset" their mothers, they forbade their offspring to attend).
If you think this story is, after all, just very ordinary, perhaps change your view on learning until the age of 13 years, mother Augusten says of her son in a quasi-final in the care of her psychiatrist, a doctor who looks ridiculous in Santa Claus, and literally leaves the house for the least special of the latter. He lives with his stepfamily and it hosts some patients occasionally (or, for some, almost permanently).
What horrifies First our heroes and we at the same time, it's grimy appearance of the desolate who swears in the neighborhood, rather customary luxurious homes and shiny. He who loves order and cleanliness is required, by necessity, to acclimate to an environment where completely messy disputes, tensions, but also an immense freedom reign. That freedom, he will cherish as long as it weigh him because as he wrote, he would have liked someone to tell him sometimes what not to do. So it comes to jail himself. But the doctor believes that everyone, from the age of 13, is mature enough to make its own decisions and Augusten likes to feel listened for the first time in his life and find that it speaks to him as an adult.
surreal scenes and psychological violence often unheard succeed and we can hardly believe that in 2010 the events have occurred such as Burroughs describes them. And yet. In this family so unstable and wobbly, Augusten eventually assert themselves and know what to do in his life. At an age when personality is constructed generally, that of Augusten deconstructed before our eyes, before gradually, it will eventually find its way.
With lucidity and a decline on bizzarerie incredible world that surrounds it, yet the author shows us the tenderness he feels for each person of his new family. But this does not prevent him from envying the lack of sentimental attachment to his biological brother, who suffers from Asperger Syndrome.
Over time, Augusten is constantly torn between two feelings: that of having just want a normal life, and to be perfectly in his element in Finch family.
often poignant memoirs, which are yet the name of "novel", take us on a roller coaster of excitement, we are always ourselves we put into question, and lead us to change our worldview. With his words, he has the ability to show us the best people, we learn not to judge anyone by appearances (after all, he himself always felt different and spoke to the branches of trees when he was little ). Running With Scissors issue above all a great message of tolerance and when it closes the book, you feel changed. We grew up, along with its author.