Possible Side Effects was hilarious. I laughed out loud several times. Augusten Burroughs' stories are wickedly funny while poignant and disturbing at the same time.
In one story, a 9-year-old Burroughs gets into a truck with a strange man who promises to show him a litter of puppies. As it turns out, there really are puppies and Burroughs ends up adopting one. Everything in the story turns out OK. Burroughs even ends the story by literally saying that everything is fine. And like all his stories on the audiobook, it ends with a cheery little musical bit.
But we know from reading Running With Scissors that things do not turn out fine for Burroughs. His mother's mental illness and his parents' neglect put him in dangerous situations that have serious, long-lasting negative consequences. He reminds us several times throughout Possible Side Effects that he is permanently damaged. It's that edge of danger and anger that make Burroughs' stories so interesting and his humor so dark.
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