Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs

Christina Patterson enjoys a rollercoaster ride of sex, psychosis and deep-conditioning hair products

You really should write all this stuff down," says one of Augusten Burroughs's adoptive sisters after discovering a new trend in the family for examining the contents of the toilet bowl and treating the turds as "messengers from heaven". "Even if I did, nobody would believe it," replies Burroughs glumly, and for once it is no less than the truth. There is no shortage of quirky American fiction, wacky and stuffed with one-liners, but this true story is a match for the strangest.

Augusten's father is an alcoholic academic, who looks like "a dried mackerel that could stand upright and wear tweed". His mother looks like Lauren Bacall and spends her days chain-smoking and writing confessional poetry. Augusten escapes from violent parental rows by selecting matching outfits for school and ensuring that his hair is "perfectly smooth like plastic".

As his parents edge towards mutual homicide, they seek help from unconventional psychiatrist, Dr Finch. On his first visit to the Finch home, Augusten is shocked by the squalor and the sight of Finch's six-year-old grandson defecating, naked, under the grand piano. A few hours later, his mother announces he will be staying there, while she moves into a motel. A few months later, she announces that Dr Finch will become his legal guardian.

In the midst of the chaos, Augusten dreams of a future as an airline steward, a soap star or, most enduringly, a hairdresser. He has always known he is gay, but is surprised, on a sudden visit to his mother's flat, to find the vicar's wife's face buried in his mother's crotch. His own sexuality is awakened at 13 by Finch's other adoptive son, Neil, a 33-year-old who forces him to give him a blow-job. Faced with his mother's psychosis and turbulent lesbian affairs, Augusten finds solace, and some rare attention, in his own abusive relationship with Neil and in his friendship with Finch's foul-mouthed daughter, Nathalie.

Burroughs tells his remarkable tale without self-pity in stunningly pared-down, precise and matter-of-fact prose. The resulting tone is controlled, but jaunty, giving rise to descriptions that are frequently hilarious and at times profoundly shocking. This style – short sentences, wisecracking wit, ironic distance and pervasive "cool" – is a familiar product of the American Creative Writing School, but here it works spectacularly well.

Burroughs's energy and zest for life carry him through and he emerges with a "PhD in survival". His survival strategies and dreams, however, seem to be largely forged by television. Under the seductive spell of its advertising, he finds comfort in the sharpness of his polyester creases, the smooth surfaces of things and the soothing effects of brand-name hair-products.

It is sitcoms whose influence proves most pervasive. When Nathalie suggests they both find jobs to finance their fast-food habits, Augusten's response is: "Jobs doing what? Our only skills are oral sex and restraining agitated psychotics." It's a great one-liner, but it raises an interesting question. Any self-respecting writer gazing back at a painful past is going to sharpen dialogue, but here you feel he may have said it. As Burroughs learnt to anaesthetise himself against the horrors of his life, television offered not just an escape, but some kind of model for living.

Running with Scissors reads like an extremely well crafted and crazed sitcom, a mix of Jerry Springer and Seinfeld. It is funny, moving and extraordinary, but you can't help thinking that it comes at quite a price.