Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. (Spoilers for the book ahead.) This book has been on my to-read list for years, and I finally picked up a copy at McKay’s for a dollar.

What in the actual fuck can I say about this book? I had a mentally ill mother and a traumatic adolescence, but Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, this made my mother look like Patty Duke; my childhood like a Norman Rockwell painting. This book is a memoir, about the author’s absolutely bonkers-ass, abusive, dysfunctional upbringing. His father was an alcoholic and his mother was legitimately, clinically insane. When he was 11, his mother gave him away to be adopted by her shrink, who lived in absolute chaotic squalor with his equally batshit family. During this time, Augusten was raped by an adult man, whom he then engaged in a “relationship” with. Everyone knew about this “relationship” and didn’t do anything to stop it. He stopped going to school somewhere around age 15. The family did insane shit like believe that the patriarch’s ACTUAL SHIT was God speaking to him. In one scene, Augusten and his adopted sister Natalie (coolcool) completely destroy the kitchen ceiling, tearing it down, and no one bats an eye. The house is full of roaches. I seriously cannot even begin to fully convey how insane this book was.

The family in question sued Burroughs and he settled, but he maintains this is the truth and continues to defend the book as a memoir. I sincerely hope it’s exaggerated or misremembered, because what the entire fuck. All that said, it was an fantastic book—just very hard to read. I’d warn TWs for just about everything, including rape, pedophilia, child abuse and neglect, mentally ill parents, animal death, and just general WTF-ity.