Book Reviews
Unflinchingly, Augusten Burroughs gouges himself (literally and figuratively), bleeds, gets it on paper—often without a neat resolution or the genre's obligatory epiphany—and then makes you laugh. Now that's genius.
New York Times Book Review
The primary reason for reading the essays in Possible Side Effects is to enjoy the sound of his rueful, funny, faintly sulky voice.... This is a book by someone who understands the frailty and absurdity of the human condition.
Washington Post
Augusten Burroughs's spare style and facility with double entendre are well suited to the biting comic essay form. He tackles everything from the tooth fairy to doll-collecting innkeepers to lesbian personal ads in this volume, and the result is fairly even and definitely hard to put down once you begin. Burroughs's greatest strengths as a memoirist are his refusal to fit into one easy box (gay man, alcoholic, ad man, New Yorker, hypochondriac, compulsive slob) and his ability to elevate reader curiosity using tone and plain observations.... He somehow manages to lure you in time after time with his unique way of describing things that could have happened to anyone, but didn't—at least not quite this way.
Globe and Mail (Canada)
At this point, labeling Augusten Burroughs a memoirist is a bit of an understatement.... Burroughs has excavated every crevice of his personal life for material. So maybe calling him a miner is more accurate. Fortunately, his work is much more environmentally friendly.... Burroughs is funny—when he's not breaking your heart.... Burroughs's breezy, clear-cut writing style is perfectly matched to his subject matter: prose-y when necessary but highly conversational, fluid, and frank. Something wonderful and new to savor.
Toronto Star
(Audio version.) Nostalgia, entertainment and humor are possible side effects of listening to this audiobook. Burroughs delivers a slew of reflections about both serious and mundane aspects of his life. His style of delivery fluctuates from piece to piece so one is never sure what the theme or moral is until he finishes. When he's not highlighting the idiosyncrasies of humanity or his own eccentricities, he romanticizes life in New York City, plots John Updike's death and expounds upon the love of his partner or pets. Though his performance keeps listener's attention, it's far from stellar. He fluctuates with character accents. He voices all of his women in the same tone and quality. His overemphasis with expletives often detracts because it's not usually necessary; expletives will stand out on their own. His youthful voice does help legitimate the stories in that the experiences shared need vibrancy to imply truthfulness. Light and endearing with the occasional somber thought, this audiobook takes hold of listeners from the beginning and carries them through adventures and mishaps that prove worth the trip.
Publishers Weekly
Memoir-essays, which, like those in Magical Thinking, run the gamut from appealing to appalling. The author of Running with Scissors offers another no-holds-barred look at his eventful life, including his troubled childhood, his former career in advertising and current career as a memoirist, his love life, his struggles with alcoholism, and his great love of animals. An absolutely brilliant writer as well as a gifted narrator, Burroughs easily draws listeners into descriptions of the everyday (vacations, business proposals, doctor visits) and his life-altering events, such as the day he took his dog to the ASPCA because his alcoholism prevented him from properly caring for the animal. While public libraries need to be aware that several of Burroughs's essays would merit the equivalent of an NC-17 rating, this outstanding work deserves serious consideration for an Audie and/or Grammy Award. Highly recommended. —Beth Farrell, Portage Cty. Dist. Lib, OH
Library Journal
Popular memoirist Burroughs 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 events described 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..
Kirkus Reviews