Memoir: Before you read any further, please note that if confessional tales of blow jobs in funeral parlours and dating big men with small penises is not your thing, then it might be best to move on now.
Augusten Burroughs is not shy. He made his name with Running With Scissors, a memoir in which the specifics of his dysfunctional and sexually active upbringing were matched only by the humour through which they were detailed. Its sequel, Dry, followed him into an alcoholic, psychologically fractured adulthood. Magical Thinking is a collection of stories filling in some of the gaps and updating his biography. Each of them employs sharp humour where other writers might have wallowed in the bizarre horror. None of them cares much about your sensitivities.
The chapter titles give you fair warning. Holy Blow Job, Cunnilingusville and Ass Burger are hardly examples of Proustian subtlety. And yet, they actually mirror the way stories which at first seem to be throwaway slices of scatology can smuggle in smart observation and surprising gracefulness. Holy Blow Job, for instance, is a story about two sexual encounters he has had with Catholic priests, and develops from a wry shocker into something quite poignant. Likewise, "ass burger" is the phrase Burroughs thinks he hears when his brother casually announces that he has the neurobiological condition Asperger's Syndrome. That is the thing about Burroughs. He may at first appear to be interested only in extracting laughs from the more embarrassing moments in his life, but they often unfurl into something unexpectedly poignant. Each keeps you guessing as to how it will end. So, a piece about toying with those irritating cold callers from credit-card companies is simply a neat, straightforward tale of fighting back; but another, on his self-obsession while dating a shrink, quite suddenly leads to a tragic twist. Nevertheless, he is always smart enough to get out before sentimentality creeps in, to move on to the time he performed self-dentistry or killed a rat.
While Magical Thinking at first appears to be a random selection of pieces about ego, his advertising career and the time he hired a sociopathic cleaner, it gradually reveals itself to be a journey towards near-conventionality and romance with partner Dennis. Along the way, he also writes about the fame his publishing success has brought him and how people would cross the street to tell him tales of their own dysfunctional lives.
This collection works best if you've read Running With Scissors or Dry, because it makes stepping into his world less jarring. If you enjoyed those, the only surprise here will be that Burroughs remains so engaging even as the territory is increasingly familiar. His obsession with sex will be off-putting for some, just tedious for others, but he is a fine and very funny storyteller. Just don't buy it for your dear old granny.
Shane Hegarty is an Irish Times journalist
Magical Thinking: True Stories By Augusten Burroughs Atlantic Books, £9.99. 268pp
