This memoir could be considered to be the sequel to his previous memoir, Running With Scissors. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary that you read the first memoir before reading Dry, because Burroughs does a great job of filling in the blanks just enough to make the reader get what he’s referring to. I still highly recommend reading Running With Scissors first, anyway, to get the full story, the whole experience.

Dry takes place a few years after the end of Running With Scissors, and is primarily about Burrough’s stint in rehab, getting “dry”. He was working in advertising, and basically was given the choice of going to rehab because of his drinking, or losing his job. He “chose” rehab.

Part of this book is about his experience in rehab, the people he met there, his thoughts and feelings about it all. Some of what happened is profound, and some quite ridiculous. Burroughs has a talent for placing the reader inside his head, just behind his eyes, as he walks through these life events. It’s like you are there, watching it in real time. The rest of the book is about what happens after he gets out of rehab, and is back in the “real world” trying to stay clean and sober. It was interesting to watch how his view of things changed after rehab. For example, before rehab, he saw his apartment as dirty, but no big deal. After rehab, he looks at the same apartment, and sees a sea of empty glass bottles that once held alcohol, obvious now, but invisible before.

I found myself fascinated by this book. I wanted to meet some of the people Burroughs knew when he was living this story, especially “Pighead”, who comes across as a shining star, as larger than life itself. All the people Burroughs talks about are interesting. “Pighead” is special.

I loved Running With Scissors but, I believe I love Dry even more. I am one of the many who greatly enjoy drinking, although I am not an alcoholic. Believe me, if I had that tendency, it’s had plenty of time to surface. The parts of the book after Burroughs has left rehab, where he is thinking about how much he wants a drink, describing the drink in so much detail. The taste, the smell, how it looks in a glass, the atmosphere of the place he would be drinking at….I appreciate all this.

While both of his memoirs alternate between heartache and hilarity, I found myself more affected this book, Dry. There is just something about this one that cuts deep, in many places. Burroughs finds love, and loses love, and he tells us everything. Parts of this book nearly had me in tears, while other parts had me laughing out loud.

One more thing I love about this book is the cover design. A white page with black text that runs down the page. It looks as though someone either left this book out in the rain, or spilled a drink across the cover, evoking images of storms, as well as drinking problems. This is a messy cover to go along with a messy set of circumstances. The cover is crying.

I find myself enjoying the writing of Augusten Burroughs enough to seek out the rest of his work. Expect more reviews of his work to follow this one.

Your childhood, no matter how bad or crazy you think it was, will seem tame by comparison. This is one of those memoirs that makes all of us with “bad childhoods” feel a little more “normal”. Burroughs writes so honestly, so intimately, censoring nothing, that it makes the reader feel like you’ve been sitting inside his head while these events were being lived.

Burroughs has his family fall apart at an early age. His dad is clearly an alcoholic, and his mom starts going crazy. She starts seeing this really eccentric psychologist, (as a therapist, not as a lover), and suddenly, Augusten finds himself spending more and more time with the therapist’s crazy family. By the time he turns twelve, his parents are divorced, his dad won’t return his phone calls, and his mother has arranged things so that her therapist has now legally adopted Augusten.

The book describes the absolute squaller that Augusten lived in with this family. He details all the insanity that surrounds him, from the therapist’s bizarre theories and methods, to the actual crazy people who lived there too. Augusten is pretty much left to make his own decisions, from the age of twelve, to eighteen, (when the book ends). Some of his choices include quitting school, trying drugs, and starting a sexual relationship with a much older man who was once also a patient of this eccentric therapist. I interpret that relationship as “troubled” at best, and “statutory rape” at worst. There are plenty of other crazy experiences that I am leaving out of this review, so you can read them for yourself. One thing is clear, though. No one raised Augusten. He pretty much had to figure things out for himself, while living in this insane place.

Meanwhile, Augusten’s mother is going crazy. She gets worse and worse, and it’s not really clear for the longest time exactly what her problem is. The whole book is fascinating, and heartbreaking, and, in parts, hysterically funny. Burroughs is a fantastic writer. This is the second time I have read this book, and I enjoyed it just as much the second time around as I did the first. The shock factor holds up, even when you know what is coming.

I have not seen the movie that was made about this book, and so, cannot comment on how the two compare. I recommend that you read this book before moving on to his other memoirs, in order to get the most out of the whole story.

Did you love the story in the book Dracula by Bram Stroker? (Click here to read my review of that book.). Did you also enjoy the style of the book The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova? (Read my review of that book here.) If so, then Hambly’s book is your next read.

Readers who are familiar with the story line and characters in Stoker’s book, will have no trouble falling right into Hambly’s book. Much of the action that takes place in Dracula happens in this book too, but, from the point of view of the character Renfield, (who is Dracula’s slave in both books). Renfield is “connected” to Dracula, and also to his three wives, and as a result, is able to “watch” the events that are going on that involved the other characters, despite the fact that he, himself, is locked in a mental hospital for a big chunk of the book. It was a nice treat to “visit with” many of the characters from Stoker’s book, once again, and the viewpoint from inside Renfield’s head was an interesting twist.

Hambly includes some passages from Stoker’s book, mostly in the form of letters or journal entries that were written by one of the main characters. The inclusion of letters and journals was something that was done very well in Kostova’s book, so, if you enjoy that form of narrative, you can get a little of that here.

I would strongly advise reading Stoker’s book before you try reading Hambly’s, so you have a good idea of who all the characters are before you jump into this book. Also, it’s more fun if you know the original story, so you can see where Hambly played around with it, in my opinion. If you happen to like stories about vampires, this book will interest you. I found Hambly’s book to be easier to read than Stoker’s was, in part because I already knew the characters and had a good guess about many of the events that were going to take place. Hambly’s book is more recent, so, you don’t end up reading confusing chapters about a ship trying to navigate a storm told by three or more minor characters, all of whom are speaking with a different accent and using different slang, (which you do find in Stoker’s book). This book ends in a completely different way than Dracula does, as Renfield attempts to gain his freedom. Dracula fans will love this book.

Somewhere in Nevada, science has gone terribly wrong.

Jack, a self described “househusband”, stays home and takes care of his three children. Julia, his wife, is a scientist, working on a top secret project that Jack, (and the other spouses), know almost nothing about. It turns out that no one, not even the scientists in charge of this project, were very well informed about what it was they were up against.

The whole book takes place in about a week, and is a quick read. At first, things are fine, though Jack does feel a bit strange being the only dad at the grocery store, and at the park. Soon, he notices Julia acting a bit strange. She seems a bit distant to him, and also with their children. She’s started heading directly to the shower immediately upon returning home from work. A bit of poking around leads Jack to believe that Julia’s strangeness towards her family might just be due to the fact that she is having an affair, with one of the other scientists. Jack is suspicious, but, has no direct evidence. He doesn’t want to believe his worst nightmare is happening.

If only it were that simple! What Jack doesn’t know is that Julia is involved in an experiment that involves nanotechnology. What started out as a test run of a prototype designed to be used by the government as either a weapon or as an electronic spy, has changed. The nanotechnology seems to be forming swarms, and doing things it wasn’t designed for.

This brings up all sorts of interesting questions. Is it alive? If so, does that mean each individual unit is alive, or just when it forms a swarm? Is any part of the swarm sentient? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then, is it ethical to be creating these little nanotech bots? If it’s alive, and can think, what does it want ?

Jack has some more immediate questions. What is going on with Julia? Is she having an affair, or is something even more sinister going on? How can this swarm be stopped?

This book is a quick read, with lots of action, and quite a bit of mysterious circumstances going on. I found it interesting, but it did leave me wanting to know more. If you are looking for a thriller that has something to do with science, nanotech, and infection, this might be your book. The whole story takes place in about a week, from start to finish, which might be good if you are looking to read a thriller. If, however, you are looking for a read that is heavy on the science, or that goes into more about how the nanotechnology in the story affects the rest of the world, well, then you might be a disappointed as I was. Like I said before, it was good, but it left me wanting more.