Ladymol's Review

This book is superb, and if you are the least interested in addictions, and you have a warped sense of humour then I think you’ll love it. Burroughs’s first book, Running With Scissors, detailed his bizarre childhood: given away to a paedophile at aged thirteen by a mad, bad mother, buggered and generally abused until he was an adult and earning his keep giving blowjobs to strangers.  Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, Burroughs has huge self-belief and manages to con himself into an advertising job at aged just 19 with no formal education (the paedophile didn’t make him go to school). It’s at that stage that this book begins. Augusten is flying high in his career and in his life, but gradually we learn the truth about the flying: it’s fuelled almost entirely on alcohol. Denying he has a problem, he nevertheless agrees to check into a gay rehab clinic for 30 days. It goes well, he dries out, meets the most incredible (we’re talking David Christopher gorgeous – and, no, that’s not just an excuse to put a David picture on the page: I don’t need an excuse for that) man and seems to life back in his control. Augusten’s problems however, go deeper than he realises. He’s only just begun the long road to being dry.

You’d think that a book about someone drying out would be worthy or boring or self-indulgent. You’d be wrong about this one. It’s one the best-written and funniest books I’ve read for a long time. It’s starkly honest and searing in its descriptions of the depths he sinks to whilst under the influence.

The gay elements are beautifully realised without being at all graphic. All in all, this is a wonderful read and I’m off to get Running With Scissors as I want to spend as much time as possible with this wonderful author.