Running with Scissors A Memoir

This New York Times Bestseller and Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year is one of the most unforgettable memoirs you’ll ever encounter. Augusten Burroughs delivers a darkly comedic, utterly unique coming-of-age story that will have you laughing one moment and gasping the next.

Running with Scissors chronicles Burroughs’ extraordinary childhood after his mother—a poet with grand delusions—hands him over to her eccentric psychiatrist at age twelve. What follows is a wild, unfiltered look at growing up in a household where chaos reigns supreme: the Christmas tree never comes down, Valium flows like candy, and an electroshock therapy machine doubles as entertainment.

Living amidst Victorian squalor with the doctor’s unconventional family, young Augusten navigates a world without rules, boundaries, or any semblance of normalcy. It’s the kind of story that sounds too bizarre to be true—yet every page crackles with the authenticity of lived experience.

What makes this memoir so compelling is Burroughs’ remarkable ability to find humor in the darkest corners of his upbringing. His sharp wit and unflinching honesty transform what could have been merely shocking into something deeply human and strangely relatable. This is survival literature at its finest: funny, harrowing, and impossible to put down.

Later adapted into a major motion picture, Running with Scissors remains a modern classic—a testament to resilience, the absurdity of family, and the extraordinary ways ordinary people survive the most unusual circumstances. Perfect for readers who appreciate fearless storytelling and memoirs that refuse to look away.

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