Cecelia F. reviewed on 2/6/2009 + 6 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

This is a very funny. a very strangely funny, story about the very strange and funny extended family of a fourteen year old boy. It takes place in the early '70's, a time when many people tested society's limits as well as their own. It was a time when the unacceptable was accepted- at least on the margins. Augusten Burroughs pinpoints the time with details of decor and fashion and through the bizarre behavior of his characters and their interests. Agnes snacks on dog food from bag and Dr. Finch divines through specimens of his daily bowel movements which, in order to record the word of the will of God, he has saved on the backyard picnic table. The family and the doctor's patients mingle among dirty dishes and furnishing embedded with pests and pet hair and everyone expresses their anger as freely as self involvement and their boredom.

There were certainly moments when I considered closing the book, forever. Fortune telling by feces was crude and disgusting but other incidents were more deeply disturbing. Young Augusten's first intimate gay sexual encounter was raw and intrusive, as if one had witnessed the rape of a teen by an older male but failed to stop it. Another was the sad demise of a cat captured in a laundry basket by its loving but deranged mistress. Such abuse of children and animals is not something to laugh away. But somehow the moment ends and a new tale lures the reader on to accounts of further madness.

When contrasted to this memoir, no matter how dark or dismal the reader's childhood, they will be left with the absolute certainty of their own sanity.

And may God help them if they find otherwise.

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