Rating: 4.50 (1 ratings)
First published 2006
Augusten Burroughs' life reads like a surreal fever dream. Abandoned by his mentally unstable mother, he's forced to navigate the eccentricities of his father's family—a clan of semi-feral oddballs. Burroughs deftly weaves tales of childhood trauma, with all its attendant confusion and pain, into a darkly comic portrait of American family life. At the core, this is a story of survival, as the young Burroughs learns to find joy and humor in the most trying circumstances.
Genres: family, memoir, biography-memoir, family-drama
Vibes: dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Period: 20th century
320 pages · Paperback · Picador
Content warnings: child-abuse, mental-illness