Running With Scissors

[Payton]

Running With Scissors by Augusten Borroughs is a captivating and entertaining novel about Borough’s teenage years living with his mother’s psychiatrist and his family. It documents all of the abnormal happenings within the home and his mother’s numerous psychotic breaks. The author’s language is very elementary as it is written by a fourteen year old drop out. Very few complex words are used and it is written almost as if it were a diary. This language makes this book a quick read that is easy to enjoy and does not require any deep thought. That being said, the content of this novel is lewd and resembles that of a reality television show. It is incredibly hard to put down because you find yourself constantly questioning whether the events that occur could possibly be legitimate. Borroughs holds back little details in telling the most private of stories; specifically stories about others in the family. He is open about his alcohol use and sexual encounters with a much older man.
One downfall to this book is it’s legitimacy. The details in this book are so horrifying that I found it necessary to research the book to make sure it was real. Upon my research I found that it is allegedly fabricated as I had suspected. According to the accusations against him, Borroughs only spent two years in the Finch home and much of the story is dramatized or completely made up. This should not be praised as it caused immense amounts of harm to those featured in the book who had moved on from the unconventional tendencies of their family and made lives for themselves. The book was published long after the events took place which made the stories in the book harder to bear for the family. The family maintains that much of the defining events that occur in the book did not happen and have evidence to prove some events are fabricated. Because of this the book should not be read as nonfiction but rather as a fiction novel.
I would recommend this book because it is captivating and entertaining. It’s content is nearly impossible to walk away from. It reads extremely well and is a great book to read over a long weekend or holiday break. However, because it is allegedly fabricated, it is imperative that the reader knows this and reads the novel as a semi-true fiction novel.