He has a Masturbatorium in his office, where he openly talks in front of a 12-year-old, and his patient, the mom, about how often he needs to go into that room to masturbate - at one point, Hope, who is his assistant, uses the room and its blanket to nap, and come to find out, the blanket is “sticky” - and oh, he allows patients, or their children, to live at his home, adopted one of them (who turns out to be a pedophile, but more on that momentarily), and he has three wives. He thinks his poops - yes, his poops - are pointing to heaven and giving him directions from God, and orders his daughter, Hope, to carry the poops outside to dry out on the picnic table. Finch is beyond the pale, and a quintessential portrait of a quack psychologist from the 1970s, if there ever was one. It sounds like the setup of a comedic sitcom, and in many ways, it is exactly that. Burroughs’s mother, a chain-smoking, aspiring poet, who seems to have manic episodes, after divorcing her abusive, alcoholic husband, sends Burroughs, age 12, to live with her … psychiatrist, Dr.

The premise of the memoir is already bonkers, folks. It helps that in addition to a ridiculous story to tell, he also has such a writer name, and a great title, although I’m not sure what the thought was behind the cover picture of a boy with a box over his head since I don’t recall a story about that from the book. I’m talking about the famous, movie-adapted 2002 memoir by Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors. When a Christmas tree is still up in May (and the kids are still mining it for candy), and a girl wears her McDonald’s uniform to the beach to go whale-watching - wearing a button promoting the newest, hottest menu item, Chicken McNuggets, no less - you know you’ve stumbled into a wildly memorable memoir.

Running with scissors novel