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Possible Side Effects
Books: CookBooks: Fondue: Item 5
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Possible Side Effectsby Augusten Burroughs
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17 of 24 people found the following review helpful: Though far from this author's best efforts, this is very funny and enteraining throughout, May 13, 2006 Reviewer:I. Sondel "I. Sondel - lover of the arts" (Tallahassee, FL United States) - I'm a huge fan of Burroughs. Like most, I first discovered him through his mega-selling "Running with Scissors." I quickly devoured his hysterical novel "Sellevision." I was less impressed with his memoir "Dry," but fell in love all over again when I read his true story collection "Magical Thinking." "Possible Side Effects" is more dry than magical, and shows the author at a crossroads. Though consistently amusing, many pieces in this new collection seem forced and find the author overreaching for a laugh, while still others feel deriviative of those previously published, or rather they seem as though they may have been leftovers - stories that didn't quite make the "Magical" cut. Still there are many rewards in "Possible Side Effects." My two favorites in this collection were: "The Georgia Thumper," which focuses on the troubled relationship between the young Burroughs and his paternal grandmother; and "The Forecast for Sommer," which is some of the strongest prose writing yet from this author. Deeply felt, though unsentimental, "The Forecast for Sommer" betrays the author's talent for dramatic, melancholy writing and provides a promising glimpse into his future and better things to come.
From Publishers Weekly
These often hilarious, sometimes contrived essays put the "me" in "confessional memoir" front and center. Burroughs recounts scenes from the floridly dysfunctional childhood chronicled in his bestselling Running with Scissors, along with vignettes from various bad jobs, including his travails at an ad agency, and his life as a famous writer. His theme is himself: his struggles with alcoholism, a voracious Nicorette habit, compulsive Web surfing, slovenliness, social isolation, unfitness for employment, gross bodily emissions and general embarrassment at being alive. The thin story lines—a visit from the tooth fairy, a trip to the doctor, house-training a puppy—suggest that Burroughs's well-mined vein of life experience may be played out. He fattens up the material—a (Frey-inspired?) disclaimer warns some events have been "expanded and changed"—in ways that sometimes ring false, especially in his childhood reminiscences, which are improbably detailed and infused with an adult sense of camp. Often, though, the only thing animating the writing is the author's perverse imagination. Fortunately, Burroughs has superb comic sensibility, throwing off sparkling riffs on everyday humiliations in a voice that's alternately caustic and warm, bitchy and self-deprecating. His self-involvement can get claustrophobic, but when he steps outside his head no one is funnier or more perceptive. (On sale May 2)
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Burroughs is the author of the memoir Running with Scissors (2002), a "runaway" best-seller, and an equally popular collection of essays, Magical Thinking (2004). In light of recent publishing events vis-a-vis truth versus truth-stretching in memoir writing, it is interesting to note the author's prefatory comments in this, his latest collection of memoir-essays. He indicates that some events recounted in the pieces have been "expanded and changed" and that some of the "individuals portrayed are composites of more than one person." What follows is a series of funny, extremely eloquent takes on modern life and Burroughs' own particular responses to life's various stimuli. "Bloody Sunday" begins with a nosebleed on an airplane flight from New York to London and then describes his reluctance to get out and enjoy the sights once there. "The Sacred Cow" is a very sweet story about getting a second bulldog, and now both his dogs, the new one and the older one, are "more precious to me than anything." And "Killing John Updike" finds Burroughs collecting Updike first editions before he dies ("If I was going to spend two thousand dollars on a book about a rabbit, that old man better be dead by morning, or I was going to be furious"). Irreverence done to an amusing turn. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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