Possible Side Effects - by: Augusten Burroughs

From the million-copy bestselling author of Running with Scissors comes Augusten Burroughs’s most provocative collection yet.

This book is approved for consumption by those seeking pleasure, escape, amusement, enlightenment, or general distraction. This book is not approved to treat disorders such as eBay addiction or incessant blind dating.

In studies, some people reported inappropriate, convulsive laughter, a tingling sensation in the limbs, and sudden gasping. Fewer than 1 percent reported narcolepsy.

Doll collectors may experience special sensitivity, as may discourteous drivers, candy-company brand managers, and nicotine-gum users.

This book has been shown to be especially helpful to those with parents, grandparents, life partners, and incontinent dogs. People with dry, cracked skin have responded well to this book, as have people with certain heart conditions.

Do not operate heavy machinery while reading this book, until you know what effects it may have on you.

This text is contraindicated in those suffering from certain psychiatric disorders, including---but not limited to---readers afflicted with anhedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasure.

Ask your doctor about Possible Side Effects.

Doll collecting. The Tooth Fairy. Incontinent dogs. eBay addiction. Hot cardiologists. Available locksmiths. Lesbian personal ads. Junior Mints. Blind dates. Nicorette gum. Coffins (as bookcases). Grandmothers. Dry skin. College t-shirts. Santa Claus. Enforcing traffic laws. Julia Child. Possible Side Effects explores the concept of cause and effect. It is a cautionary tale in essay form. Be forewarned and read the label: hilarious, troubling, and shocking results might occur.

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 2006 Reed Business Information.

This collection of short pieces is a delightful, enjoyable, and often humorous take on everything from the author's Nicorette Gum addiction to discovering what the tooth fairy really meant as a child. Burroughs's previous three memoirs-Running with Scissors, Dry, and Magical Thinking-have been highly regarded, turning him into something of a publishing phenomenon (Running with Scissors alone has sold a staggering one million copies). This book is yet another testament to his wild imagination and could keep the readers up at night as well as help the author gain a whole new legion of fans. Burroughs ducks the current controversy regarding memoir by cleverly explaining that some events happened as indicated while others were altered; the ostensibly real-life stories suggest an eccentric childhood indeed and are sure to enthrall readers. The film version of Running with Scissors, being directed by Emmy Award-nominated writer/director Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck), began filming in March 2005 with a stellar cast that includes Annette Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alec Baldwin, Jill Clayburgh, and Joseph Cross (as Burroughs). A memorable book; highly recommended for public libraries.-Sue McClellan, Avalon P.L., Pittsburgh Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Popular memoirist Burroughs (Running with Scissors, 2002, etc.) again turns his whirligig neuroses into something resembling a book. In this general updating of life in the world of bestsellerdom, the author pulls together a string of autobiographical essays and sketches that consistently entertain, even if they don't always enlighten. You can almost see the child from a disturbed home dancing frantically about in these pages, doing anything to ward off the darkness. It brings a grimace with the laughter. Like many creative people who don't know what to do with themselves, Burroughs once worked in advertising, an experience summed up in a particularly gruesome piece about working on a Junior Mints campaign. "I hadn't been on the account for one week," he writes, "and already the phrase mint threshold was being bandied about." While the ad game is good for several anecdotes, Burroughs always spirals back to the morass of his inner world, which seems at times an endless parade of worry and addiction. After years of drinking and drugging, the author appears to have managed the transition from those substances to other dependencies: junk food, QVC, chain hotels, nicotine gum. Each of these provides grist for his self-mocking, Sedaris-like humor. Later chapters journey into territory more familiar to his fans: the tempestuous landscape of his childhood, complete with a manic-depressive mother and a brother afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome. The book peters out amidst less successful pieces of this sort; oddly, the less serious his subject matter, the more meaningful and heartfelt his prose. Readers will likely disregard the post-James Frey author's note indicating that "some of the eventsdescribed happened as related, other were expanded and changed." As if we didn't know. Wears a little thin by the end, but still no mean effort. Sometimes, a genuine laugh or 20 is enough. First printing of 500,000