Running with Scissors: A Memoir

This beautifully crafted autobiography is an unsparing, explicit account of the author's troubled childhood. Sent to live with a psychiatrist named Dr. Finch after his crazy parents—one, a lesbian poet, the other, a professor with a violent streak—divorce, 12-year-old Augusten finds himself in a lawless household where the Finch children, unsupervised, do everything kids shouldn't—skip school, tear up the house, have sex. Augusten has an affair with Finch's son, who is more than twice his age, and he never regains the stability of normal family life. Yet somehow, despite his unorthodox upbringing, he manages to emerge triumphant, with his sense of humor—and of himself—intact. A review of Dry, his follow-up memoir, appears elsewhere in this issue. A reading group guide is available online at www.picadorusa.com.