Running with Scissors

‘Running with Scissors’ is a memoir by Augusten Burroughs about his crazy childhood and adolescence years with his dysfunctional family. His mother is a struggling writer who suffers from some form of mental illness (possibly bipolar or a personality disorder) and his father is a functional alcoholic who works as a university professor. Augusten’s older brother is John Elder Robison who wrote his own autobiography about growing up without a diagnosis. However, due to the age difference between the two, John is featured minimally as he had already moved out of home when Augusten started his memoirs. Augusten’s parents constantly bicker and fight to the point where he thought they would definitely kill one another.

In order to save their marriage, they saw a psychiatrist, Dr Finch, one who his mother had been seeing individually. However, his parents did end up getting divorced. Some years after that, he began living with Dr Finch and his own dysfunctional family. Apparently, Dr Finch opened up his home to his patients and that included a paedophile who became Augusten’s lover, a woman with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and of course, Augusten. Dr Finch’s household is quite different from Augusten’s own volatile one where there still were rules and regulations. In Dr Finch’s house, once a person reached the age of 13, they were free to do as they pleased. Hence, if it meant dating an adult, it was fine. If a child didn’t want to go to school, that too was fine. If Dr Finch wanted to sleep around with other ‘wives’, that too was acceptable.

Running with Scissors is a witty look into what could be perceived as being a horrible chlidhood. Yet, Burroughs looks at it through dark humour and not self-pity as some memoirs do. He doesn’t look at himself as a victim but looks at his life through curious lenses. Just as an outsider would. However, at the same time, you can see just how messed up everyone is. He does seem to realise at one point that despite all the freedom in Dr Finch’s house, there can be something as too much freedom. It seems to reach a point where no one cares. He takes us through his trouble with school, his sexual escapades, understanding his sexual orientation, his relationship with the paedophile, his trysts with drugs and alcohol and of course, dealing with a parent with mental health problems.

He has changed the names of the characters in the book and I think that’s understandable given that they are all so messed up. It probably wouldn’t be fair to them especially if they have started families of their own to be known in such a manner. Dr Finch is a weird character and I was very surprised that he wasn’t monitored by the medical association as he was quite dodgy in terms of his practice. While Augusten did have his ups and downs, I think the main thing he seems to say is that he is still managing. Despite his messed up childhood, he can manage. He’s not perfect. But he is living a decent reasonable life.

If you do read it, be prepared to be shocked. I give this book a rating of 3.

Until next time,

Cheers!!!

Saving Max

‘Saving Max’ is Antoinette van Heugten’s first book. It focuses on Danielle Parkman, a single mother and lawyer from New York and her son Max, a 16 year old with high functioning autism. As Max’s behaviours and moods get harder for Danielle and Max’s therapist to manage, it is recommended that he be admitted to Maitland Psychiatric Asylum in Iowa. One of the best inpatient facilities in the country. Once there, Danielle befriends another mother Marianne Morrison whose son Jonas has also just been admitted as he is profoundly autistic. Once admitted, Max’s behaviour gets increasingly violent and the staff diagnose him with schizoaffective disorder. A diagnosis that Danielle refuses to accept. She wants a second opinion. But before anything can be done, Max is accused of murdering Jonas. And given that Danielle and he are both found at the crime scene with the murder weapon by a nurse doesn’t help the cause.

Danielle is convinced that Max is not a murderer. But she has to convince Max’s lawyer Tony Sevillas and the private investigator Doaks of the same. And it’s hard to do it when she herself is released on bail and due to stand trial for her role.

Did Max murder Jonas in a fit of psychotic rage?

Why did his behaviours escalate at the facility?

Who is the shadow that Danielle thinks she saw leaving the crime scene?

Are any of the doctors responsible for Max’s behaviours?

How far would Danielle go to save her son?

To know all these answers, you have to of course read the book.

It’s a good suspense novel and has all the right ingredients to keep you interested. However, there are certain things that Danielle does to try and save her son which seem a bit too far-fetched in my opinion. A few things are also quite questionable including things like security at the inpatient facility and the way it all seems like a set up from the 70s. The court scene is quite interesting but then again, I’ve always found those interesting (thanks to John Grisham!) And while you find out whodunit about three-quarters into the book, there are other questions that remain unanswered. All in all, it’s a decent thriller if you are not looking for high quality literature. I give it a 3.

Until next time,

Cheers!

The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar is a work of fiction and the first and only novel written by Sylvia Plath. It is set in America in the 1950s and is about Esther Greenwood, a young woman who wins an internship at a New York fashion magazine. Esther is elated about this initially as she dreams of becoming a writer. However, she also notices a kind of apathy towards her day-to-day life. Eventually, following a setback where she does not get into community college for writing, Esther’s depression is triggered and she spirals drastically.

We follow Esther’s journey through this depression where she has sleepless nights, has no appetite, avoids social contact as much as she can, is paranoid about everyone’s motives, doubts her own abilities, thinks she will never amount to anything and attempts suicide. She is admitted into an asylum (as it was known back in the day) and administered electroconvulsive therapy (as was the main therapeutic approach for depression back then). Through all this, she struggles to make sense of how hard it is for a woman in a man’s world and why men get to do certain things but women cannot. And most importantly to her, struggling to be taken seriously in a society where women’s aspirations and dreams are not given much importance.

This book by Sylvia Plath was first published under a pseudonym only weeks before her own suicide. There are theories that The Bell Jar is actually a semi-autobiographical work given that Plath herself suffered from depression and ultimately ended her own life at the age of 30 by sticking her head in the oven and dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.

For me, given that I knew Plath’s history and that the book was based on her own life in some ways made it a lot more interesting. The description of Esther’s mental health is so accurate one has to be a psychologist or psychiatrist or actually dealing with the same problem to be able to write about it in the manner that Plath has. You can literally feel Esther’s low mood and flatness oozing through the pages. You can see her hopelessness even though rationally you understand that it’s not the end of the world for her. You can see how she convinces herself why she must end her life. And you feel sorry for her. You want her to get better. You want her to be able to get out of the asylum and achieve her goals and dreams. The writing style can be a bit difficult to get in that it almost seems like free-writing in some instances and you get the sense the story moves on depending on the author’s mood. Having said that, it’s still a pretty easy read and kept me hooked to the end.

I give it 4 stars but I will warn you there is a feeling of emptiness associated with the book. Possibly due to the extensive insight into a person’s depression.

Until next time,

Cheers!!!