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Summary: Reads like fiction but its not!
Review: I read Running with Scissors and was so interested to see where Augusten went from that childhood. This book, in my opinion, was written to read like a fiction book and turned out to be a real page turner! I loved the fact that not only did he tell you what happened in his life he also told you how he really felt about everything that was happening around him.
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Summary: Listen to Burroughs read this book.
Review: I listened to this book via a service called Audible.com. To hear the author read this work is truly a transcendent experience. The way he does the voices of the various characters is hilarious. I do'nt have the literary skills to describe how fun and bittersweet it was to hear the author tell his tale. I commend this audio book experience to all who enjoy listening to a great storyteller.
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Summary: What a Book!
Review: Dry, is Augusten Burroughs funny, YES, funny, does he make it? memoir about addictions, and wrestling with "kicking his alcoholism" Burroughs is direct, interesting, funny, candid, and quite a personality. I found myself "waiting" for him to fall off the wagon, and hoping fervently that he made it through. I rooted for him on every page, and came to really care about this author, and read this book in 3 evenings. Great book, a true slice of an alcoholics struggles, in life.
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Summary: Coming to Be Honest with Himself
Review: Burroughs memoir is iconoclastic, and almost oxymoronic, as he represents awkward, embarrassing, distasteful, and tragic episodes in his life in a skillful sardonic, self effacing fashion that makes you frequently laugh out loud, despite the seriousness and severity of conditions at hand.Perhaps what prompts, and allows you to be entertained by this memoir rendolent with addiction, child abuse, terminal illness, and loss is the fact that Burroughs has surmounted these challenges and become a stronger, but far from smug -- nor sanctimonious, person. His memoir is brutally honest with and about himself. While "Dry" isn't really "humorous", Burroughs is able to laugh at himself, though one suspects this is a long established coping/survival mechanism for him. "Dry" is not simply a sarcastic and self mocking tale. It is also a moving memoir about love, loss, and communication in relationships. You will be touched as well as simultaneously entertained and horrified by this memoir.
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Summary: Hilarious and Heartrending
Review: Augusten Burroughs is one of the most entertaining writers on the current scene. After reading his RUNNING WITH SCISSORS and accepting the fact that it was truly a memoir (ie, he really DID have that childhood!), most of us who loved that book couldn't wait to see if he would be able to maintain his particular level of genius dry humor. Well, here it is. DRY is the continued life of this amazing writer. It is one of the most hilarious books around - Burroughs candid observations written sotto voce without quotation marks could be the dialogue for the best standup comedians on any stage. And he is not kidding! A book about alcoholism, or rather about any kind of addiction (crack cocaine, alcohol, sex, heroine, etc), is not the expected basis for a comedic book. But Burroughs takes us through blitzkrieg drunkeness, living at the bottom of the toilet, commiting to rehab, then the whole process of AA meetings and therapy and manages to make us laugh uncontrollably. His cast of characters includes his co-workers in his successful career in advertising, his pre-rehab friends, his acquaintances from his gay rehab group, his assorted roommates and quasilovers, and his real devotion to Pighead, a would-be lover now dying of AIDS. Doesn't sound funny, does it? But life has its own way of offering perspectives in bizarre focal fields and Burroughs knows just how to make it all work. His life is a fantasy trip, and a dangerous one at that, but through all his highs and lows he keeps us on his side, and we willingly laugh and cry right along with him. This is a superb second book. Read them both - and then take a little time for introspection about how we all interact, knee deep in our foibles.
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Summary: Even better than "Scissors"
Review: "Running with Scissors" is a uniquely effective memoir because Burroughs never indulges in self-pity, though he certainly had plenty of reasons to do so. Even when describing the most outrageous characters from his extremely dysfunctional childhood, he never loses sight of their humanity. Just as important, he doesn't let anyone off the hook by romanticizing the past. He is a very gifted writer whose talent to choose just the right words is always apparent, but never obtrusive. "Scissors" was believable because it was told through the eyes of Burroughs as a child. In writing "Dry", the account of his battle to become sober and stay that way, Burroughs' challenge was even greater than with "Scissors". It's easier, perhaps, for a reader to feel unconditional empathy for a child who is subjected to a series of bizarre events that are beyond his control. In "Scissors", the reader identifies with Burroughs and his own problematic behavior is easily understood and forgiven (not that he asks that of the reader). It's a far different proposition when we read about the events of his adulthood, when he has a successful career, lots of money, and relatively few responsibilities. We expect an apparently self-sufficient adult to behave in a certain manner, and are less likely to tolerate deviations from the norm. Burroughs does not sugar-coat his behavior and does not ask the reader to excuse him for any shortcomings he may have. Instead, he brings us along as he stumbles and lurches toward greater self-awareness and attemtps to free himself of various self-destructive behaviors. There are scenes that are even more hysterical (and I use the word in all of its meanings) than in "Scissors", because Burroughs writes with a much more adult tone and a more acerbic humor. We find that while he has made some meaningful connections with friends, he is fundamentally just as isolated as he was during his childhood. His job, while it provides him with a comfortable living, brings him little pleasure. His most constant and favorite lover is alcohol. That he manages to survive will not come as a surprise to readers of "Scissors". Of course he doesn't do it the easy way, but that's all part of the journey that we take with him in this book. I found it profoundly moving and it made me examine my own life more than most books do. In short, another triumph from a tremendously gifted writer.
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Summary: Fun Non-Fiction
Review: After a day of lawyering, I seek sharp, witty reading that allows me a break from the staid work day. "Dry" was a respite from my dull schedule and provided me some laughs before turning out the light. Since I have some experience with A.A., I could identify with the process he wrote about with such off-hand humor, and I really liked his alcoholic sarcasm.
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Summary: Slickly engineered, but a real disappointment
Review: Augusten Burroughs's second memoir just isn't anywhere near as enjoyable as his first. To have this account of a rehabilitation and recovery from aclcohol addiction really work you'd have to have an authorial persona whom you'd really feel a stake in wanting to succeed, but the "Augusten" voice who emerges from this book isn't someone whom you really care about one way or another. He's funny, but not especially so (certainly nowhere near the level of David Sedaris, to whom Burroughs is often compared), and he is (as he himself is the first to admit) consummately and spectacularly shallow. This may not come off as much of a surprise for a successful advertising executive, but it certainly does work against the interests of the book: there have probably been few books ever written where the other characters are so often valued and judged almost wholly on their relative physical attractiveness. In the end you just don't care that much whether or not the main character stays on or off the wagon. Burroughs's advertising background also probably explains how superfically engineered this memoir is, too: the characters might as well walk around with enormous signs that say "TRUE FRIEND," "BAD NEWS," and "COMIC RELIEF." I really wanted to enjoy this book, and in the end just couldn't.
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Summary: Relapse as internal drama
Review: I rushed to get this after reading about it. As a another sober alcohol gay man I figured I would have a lot to relate to, and I did. Dry is very powerful, and moving while also very funny. Burroughs' is crisp and clean enough in his language that the messy struggles he goes through to get sober, are always riveting and well described - even for someone who has never struggled with drinking against their own will. The protagonist sets himself up for a relapse, - no AA meetings, no sponsor, and seething resentments - so that we see it coming for 50 pages and cannot help or turn away. What is essentially an internal struggle becomes as engaging as a big movie battle scene with us cheering for his doomed sobriety. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: Putting Scissors in Perspective
Review: Unlike its predecessor, Running with Scisors, this is not only a side-creasingly funny book. It certainly starts that way, with Augusten staggering lower Manhattan streets powered by Dewar's and martinis, and there are some half-anticipated human oddities that tickle us along through the book. But there's something new here. Consequences. Yes, RWS was about abuse, but somehow we never felt Burroughs was getting hurt or causing harm; he almost told us as much. This time both fates befall him, though it takes a while for any of us to realise it. It's a deeper and more deliberately structured tale, and in some ways the better for that and for its pathos. I love the way we are growing with Augusten through these books. This time the experiences are not as unique as those in RWS, but go back to the earlier book and it's hard not to read it differently and with more, well, humanity, refracted through our knowledge of what is to come. P.S. Note to author for next edition: English people eat Marmite, not Vegemite.
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