Running With Scissors Analysis

Running with Scissors: A Synopsis Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors is a memoir retelling Burroughs’ rather eventful life between the ages of nine and seventeen. The story begins with a description of his mother, Deirdre, getting ready in the bathroom to leave for the night. Burroughs expresses the feelings of abandonment that he often faces when she leaves, and as the story unfolds, he reveals his father’s alcoholism as well as the constant, usually violent, arguments that take place between the two of them. Soon enough, his parents divorce and his mother, mentally-ill, begins seeing a psychiatrist named Dr. Finch. In order to stay protected from his father, Burroughs is eventually forced to move in with Dr. Finch, who later becomes his legal guardian; meanwhile, his mother stays elsewhere. Augusten then befriends Dr. Finch’s

During his stay at the Finch house, Augusten meets a man named Neil Bookman, a former patient of Dr. Finch and adopted son to him. Despite Bookman being twenty years older than Burroughs, the two become romantically and sexually involved with one another for several years, that is, until Neil Bookman disappears completely. The relationship is fairly imbalanced: Bookman becomes obsessed with Augusten, but Augusten becomes somewhat verbally abusive to him. As of the end of the book, Neil Bookman’s whereabouts are still unknown. Similarly, Austen’s mother struggles with unhealthy relationships and poor life choices. She first begins seeing a woman named Fern, who is the wife of a minister; however, her delusional expectancy of Fern to leave her family and of Fern’s husband to be supportive of their affair results ultimately in the end of their relationship. Not long after the split, Deirdre starts dating another woman named Dorothy, who is surprisingly accepting of Deirdre’s psychotic breakdowns and her repetitive