The best books that can help you survive a kooky childhood

Augusten Burroughs memoir, Running With Scissors, was my call to action! Within minutes of reading its opening pages, I had an epiphany. RWS was a roadmap for me; a book that showed me what kind of a memoir I wanted to write, and made it seem maybe do-able. Like my memoir it’s darkly funny, has a wacky cast of characters, insane situations, car chases, a crazy mom, and a main character who survives, reasonably intact in spite of it all. If only there had been a book like RWS when I was growing up! I would have thought that maybe, just maybe, everything was going to turn out alright. Which it did. 

Eloise is a children’s picture book about a six-year-old girl who lives with her nanny, named Nanny, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. She has no real parents; her father isn’t around and her mother prefers to jet set around the world, shopping and eating lunch. Eloise is hilariously unkempt, in her rumpled party dress, uncombed hair, and crooked hair bow, she prowls the hotel, looking for snacks and adventure. Eloise has always been close to my heart for her wild imagination and her plucky acceptance of being a fabulously neglected child. 

I’m a big believer in self-help books. This was recommended to me by a therapist who basically saved my life, navigating me through a very difficult time in my life in my twenties. The author, Victoria Secunda, breaks down all the different dysfunctional types of mothers, with chapters titled “The Avenger”, “The Doormat”, “The Critic”, in an easy-to-understand way. Reading this book helped me “diagnose” my mother, who never took responsibility for her mental illness, always blaming her behavior on her kids or others. This book helped me to understand her more fully, perhaps even feel compassion for her. I often recommend it to anyone who, like me, has or had a troubled relationship with their mother.

This beautifully written coming-of-age novel is the story of a young boy living in poverty in 1980s Glasgow with his alcoholic mother. It is epically and inevitably tragic, but I was transfixed and uplifted by the ferocious love the main character, Shuggie, has for his mother, Agnes, and she for him. When I finished the book it was as if the author has given me a gift. Shuggie endures so much but despite his turbulent home life he manages to transcend it, escape, and make a life for himself. It’s an incredible and exquisitely wrought tale of survival.

I chose this quietly devastating first novel by Susan Minot because it is a delicate family story, thought to be based on her own childhood of growing up as one of seven children. When it came out, many of her siblings became upset with her portrayal of events; a few even wrote their own novels with their version of what they perceived as “the truth”. My own sister stopped speaking to me when I sent her my first memoir to read. She eventually came around, and told me she was glad I’d told our story. I believe that the truth is not a solid, but a liquid. Truth is personal—it’s what we see, assume or believe filtered through our own lens and experience.