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30th out of 57 books
—
32 voters
The Long Journey Home: A Memoir
First introduced to the world in her sons’ now-classic memoirs—Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors and John Elder Robison’s Look Me in the Eye—Margaret Robison now tells her own haunting and lyrical story. A poet and teacher by profession, Robison describes her Southern Gothic childhood, her marriage to a handsome, brilliant man who became a split-personality alcoho...more
Hardcover, 400 pages
Published
May 17th 2011
by Spiegel & Grau
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Like many others, I was interested in Margaret Robison's book because I have read "Running with Scissors" by her son, Augusten Burroughs and "Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's" by her son John Elder Robison. I looked forward to "The Long Journey Home" because I hoped it might answer the questions that I had from reading about her from her sons' viewpoints. What could possibly have happened to her in her life to make her behave in the way that she did? I wanted to understand her side of...more
I can't really tell you much about this book without giving critical parts of her story away. I will tell you that this was a pretty fascinating book about a woman suffering from pretty awful mental health issues during a time in our society when it was even more frowned upon. In current times if you have a person who is depressed we treat them right away and we don't think twice. Back then, it was often ignored and viewed as shameful and sometimes it's a precursor to something far worse, which...more
Similar to many other readers, I chose Margaret Robison's book because I have read, and loved "Running with Scissors" “A Wolf at the Table” and “Dry” by her son, Augusten Burroughs.
This book details the plethora of psychotic break downs, and abusive episodes the author suffered while attempting (and I use that word lightly) to mother two boys.
I don’t doubt the author’s struggle with mental illness, but this book felt extremely self-indulgent as it appears the author spent most of her waking mom...more
One of the most compelling and disturbing things about this memoir is Robison's ability to take the reader into the heart of her psychosis. Much of the book is not about being psychotic - there is everyday neglect, an unhappy childhood, a terribly destructive marriage, depression, the saving grace of art, and much about being a confused and chaotic mother - but it's in describing psychosis that Robison is most powerful. The passages describing her commitment to various mental health wards are ch...more
Margaret Robison’s memoir, "A Long Journey Home", was a journey to read. Much of her writing was disjointed and, at times, hard to follow. She rambled on, obsessing over minute details that lacked substance. For any novelist, there is a fine balance between giving too much detail and not giving enough. Robison erred on the side of too much information. Sometimes her writing was calm and clear, but most of the time it jumped erratically from thought to thought.
The thing that made this novel hard...more
The thing that made this novel hard...more
Until last week I was not aware of this memoir written by the mother of Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison. I discovered it while searching for something else on the catalog of my public library.
I have read memoir by both Burroughs and Robison. Initially I thought it would be interesting to see how different (or similar) their accounts were from that of their mother. Instead I was almost immediately drawn in to the life of this woman, whose own life was fascinating, challenging and in ma...more
I have read memoir by both Burroughs and Robison. Initially I thought it would be interesting to see how different (or similar) their accounts were from that of their mother. Instead I was almost immediately drawn in to the life of this woman, whose own life was fascinating, challenging and in ma...more
Like many I picked this book up because I happened to read 'Running with Scissors'...and everything else Augusten Burroughs has written now. The Long Journey Home started out quite slow with images from her childhood that didn't really explain too much. Her account of a lot of occurrences seems choppy, and the order of the book is really all over the place. Now this might have been done on purpose, to make it seem more 'poetic' I'm not sure. It could also be due to the fact she probably had to f...more
This review is based on an Advanced Reader's Edition. I was not familiar with the Robison family before meeting them in this book but it functions well as a stand-alone memoir. It begins with not Margaret but her parents and other close relatives, who would all heavily influence her life. Born into an odd amalgam of characters, heiress to unspoken family secrets, Margaret Robison spends her youth in Cairo, Georgia, wanting to be someone - and somewhere - else. The memoir follows Margaret as she...more
This might be the strangest memoir I have read, but coming from the mother of Augusten Burroughs (nom de plume of Chris Robison), as well as John Elder Robison, both authors of offbeat memoirs, that is not surprising. Setting this one apart is its paucity of dialogue, which, while being more true to her story according to her experience and memory, is not the most compelling reading. The author's lifelong surrender of personal sovereignty to flawed friends and relatives who don't necessarily kno...more
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After reading "Look Me In the Eye" by John Elder Robison and then "Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs (and becoming a major fan of Burroughs and his other books), how could I NOT read "The Long Journey Home: A Memoir" by Margaret Robison? After reading this memoir, it is apparent why Burroughs stopped speaking with his mother after he wrote "Running with Scissors" and slammed her "turn" at telling their story. Ms. Robison is so obviously playing the victim in this, while conveniently i...more
I thought this was an interesting exercise in memory and self- justification. Reading this as a supplement to Running with Scissors and Look me in the Eye, memoirs by her two sons, let's you see the tangled and confusing way lives are experienced in the same dysfunctional family. This book lacks some honesty and depth, but it certainly made me think Augusten Burroughs (Margaret's son Chris) was either so damaged that he can't see his experiences objectively, or that he is still so angry at his p...more
Many of us have read Ms. Robison's sons' memoirs on growing up in their highly dysfunctional family. Long Journey Home is their mother's response. The book is a bit choppy and chaotic, but there are moments throughout that remind you that the author is a poet - landscape or moments vividly described in unexpected language.
My problem with all three books is personal and derives from my difficulty in answering some questions for myself: At what point does memoir about family become cathartic and i...more
My problem with all three books is personal and derives from my difficulty in answering some questions for myself: At what point does memoir about family become cathartic and i...more
I kept wondering. . . Why am I reading this. She can't write. That was what I thought about part 1. I stopped reading to look her up and realized she's Augusten Burroughs' mother. Ooh. Now I get it.
I did think the writing was better later in book, more intense and expressive. Urgent. Still, though, I am shocked by so much dysfunction and non-parenting. I so wish someone had gotten it together to parent these two kids. While I enjoyed running with scissors somewhat, now that I have read this and...more
I did think the writing was better later in book, more intense and expressive. Urgent. Still, though, I am shocked by so much dysfunction and non-parenting. I so wish someone had gotten it together to parent these two kids. While I enjoyed running with scissors somewhat, now that I have read this and...more
I enjoyed this book. It was very interesting to read the "other side" of the story. When I read Running With Scissors, I was absolutely horrified by some of what Burroughs said happened in his life.
Robison's side of the story is equally disarming. Her memoir reads as a fairly emotionless recount of a pretty tragic and depressing life. I kept waiting for some emotion to seep into the story, but it was pretty flat.
There were times when I found myself trying to piece together a "truth" by adding he...more
Robison's side of the story is equally disarming. Her memoir reads as a fairly emotionless recount of a pretty tragic and depressing life. I kept waiting for some emotion to seep into the story, but it was pretty flat.
There were times when I found myself trying to piece together a "truth" by adding he...more
I received this book as a First Reads Edition and was really excited to read it. Having finished the book I am feeling rather mixed. It was a bit disjointed as I have seen other reviewers mention. To be fair the author has had multiple psychotic breaks and a massive stroke and freely admits to gaps in her memory so a fully linear narrative is not a fair expectation and probably not even necessary. There are some very strong images and feelings evoked as the author discusses her battle with menta...more
I really loved this book. I'd read Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors (thought it had to be a very exaggerated story in some parts) and Dry (which I thought was the best 'hitting bottom and recovering' book I've ever read) as well as John Robison's Look Me in the Eye (super helpful in giving insight about Asperger's). Like both of her sons, Margaret Robison is a compelling writer. I stayed up all night reading this. Ms. Robison spoke honestly about the difficulties of living with abuse an...more
I've read everything Margaret Robison's two sons have written (Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison) so I was really looking forward to reading Margaret Robison's memoirs. I knew from reading Augusten Burroughs' books that life was harrowing, to say the least, and learning about it from her perspective was something I was interested in.
My problem -- it dragged and dragged and I started skipping more and more pages. Also, after reading Augusten Burroughs's books, I just couldn't reconcile th...more
My problem -- it dragged and dragged and I started skipping more and more pages. Also, after reading Augusten Burroughs's books, I just couldn't reconcile th...more
I won this from Goodreads giveaways.
Ok, weird? It was hard to believe her. She discusses her many psychotic breaks, and it was difficult to accept what she wrote about her life. Making her version of events even harder to accept is the fact that I read her son's book, Running with Scissors, first so I already had an image of her as a person with severe mental health issues. It would be interesting to see what someone thinks of this book who has not read Running with Scissors. I found her son's b...more
Ok, weird? It was hard to believe her. She discusses her many psychotic breaks, and it was difficult to accept what she wrote about her life. Making her version of events even harder to accept is the fact that I read her son's book, Running with Scissors, first so I already had an image of her as a person with severe mental health issues. It would be interesting to see what someone thinks of this book who has not read Running with Scissors. I found her son's b...more
This is the book Augusten Burroughs' mother has been writing since before he even published Running with Scissors.Obviously, this book has a much larger audience than it would have had not Running with Scissors and other of Augusten's books been so popular.I read this curious to get his mother's side of the story.She is a very different sort of writer than her son, but has obviously been an influence on him.This book gives her version of the events that Augusten mentions in his books.She denies...more
How odd and troubling that the lives of Margaret Robison and her son Chris (Augusten Burroughs) are on display through these memoirs. Robison and Burroughs have conflicting narratives of who they are and what their lives were like when Chris was growing up. Chris now has several memoir-like books, speaking of the horrors of his childhood. Robison speaks of her horrific mental illness, her husband's alcoholism and abuse, and admits to the harm all of this caused her sons. And yet her view of hers...more
Themes of memory, journeys, and the struggles through life's obstacles populate this memoir by a woman who has been spotlighted in memoirs by her sons.
Each of these three individuals—Margaret, her son John Elder, and her son Chris (Augusten Burroughs)—has a different and unique story, and the points on which they differ are not as important to their individual stories as the themes they share. Memories of pain, addiction, and mental illness.
Margaret Robison's "The Long Journey Home: A Memoir" ta...more
Each of these three individuals—Margaret, her son John Elder, and her son Chris (Augusten Burroughs)—has a different and unique story, and the points on which they differ are not as important to their individual stories as the themes they share. Memories of pain, addiction, and mental illness.
Margaret Robison's "The Long Journey Home: A Memoir" ta...more
Everyone has a story. Margaret Robison’s story took many years to tell. Her sons (Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison) told only bits and pieces of her story in telling their own stories. Margaret used poetry to share glimpses of her thoughts and feelings, but poetry is just that: glimpses. Here in her memoir, Margaret Robison is able to tell her own very emotional story.
Margaret’s childhood in the 1950s was a different world than the world today. However, even then it was a facade. It was...more
A couple of years ago I read Augusten Burroughs's books Running With Scissors, and Dry. Running With Scissors was a book that was both disturbing and haunting. At the conclusion of the memoir, I found myself wondering what kind of family Burroughs had come from and naturally I wanted to know what possessed the boy's mother to deposit him in the home of her clearly unstable psychiatrist. When I saw that Augusten's mother had written her own memoir, I was eager to get my hands on it. After reading...more
This book is the occasionally hyper-dramatic but always eerily compelling account of how Robison managed her way through life, despite complications and contradictions, navigating anger, betrayal, loss, happiness and success. Some passages, standing alone, would receive 5 stars, and in those moments of clarity and insightful honesty, I could not stop reading. But a good number of passages seemed overblown and bordering on maudlin - those moments would rank as 2 stars. So the text evens out overa...more
UG. What a snake pit of a book. I know most readers are predisposed to hate Robison because of her son's books. So I tried to be cool while I read it. But wow. Meandering directionless through a childhood that isn't nearly as beautifully tragic as she wants it to be. Winding up drowning in a (relatively trauma-less, untragic) life of her own creation that is, surprise, as miserable as she is.
It's supposed to be Faulkner-esque and maybe it is but that doesn't mean it's not crap. It's supposed to...more
It's supposed to be Faulkner-esque and maybe it is but that doesn't mean it's not crap. It's supposed to...more
I should state first that I am a huge fan of both of this author's well known sons, Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison. Both have shared stories of what can only be described as a massively dysfunctional and wildly unconventional upbringing. I wondered for years about the life experiences their parents had endured during their own formative years, and how that shaped the way they raised their own two very talented sons. Ms. Robison is a very talented writer, leaving no doubt in my mind th...more
"The Long Journey Home" by the mother of Augusten Burroughs was more of an autobiography than a memoir and definitely seemed like an answer to her son's writings. It was a dry run-through of a troubled life and, in my opinion, would never have been published if it wasn't for "Running With Scissors."
The writing was jumbled and fractured. Mostly disturbing was how anyone could remember the exact details of drugged breakdowns, which made it seem contrived.
The writing was jumbled and fractured. Mostly disturbing was how anyone could remember the exact details of drugged breakdowns, which made it seem contrived.
Ugh. She lacks the talent of either of her sons, especially Augusten. After having read all of his stuff, I expected to be thoroughly entertained by his mother's work. This woman clearly thinks she has all the talent in the world, as she often reminds the reader. If you have to remind your audience that you are a Writer, there's a problem. She also repeatedly complains about her difficult childhood, which, compared to the hell she exposed her own sons to, was nothing. She's self important and bo...more
A fan of both "Running with Scissors" and "Look Me in the Eye," I was really looking forward to reading the side of the women who shaped the authors of both of these memoirs, since she really seemed too bad to be true in both books and I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. However, at halfway through Robison's memoir, I am having a tough time getting there because she is so incredibly self-absorbed throughout the text. I understand that this is partly due to her mental illness, but at t...more
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Dec 13, 2011 12:35pm