cover image The Long Journey Home: A Memoir

The Long Journey Home: A Memoir

Margaret Robison. Random/Spiegel & Grau, $26 (400p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6869-2

The mother of Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors) and John Elder Robison (Look Me in the Eye) recounts her own troubled life in this unremarkable tell-all. A Georgia native, Robison spent her childhood under the repressive thumb of her mother, with art her only escape. She met her soon-to-be husband, John Robison, when they were both students at the University of Georgia. It was the beginning of a tumultuous 23-year relationship marked by abuse and the birth of their two sons, John Elder and Chris (who later changed his name to Augusten Burroughs). The family moved frequently, following John's teaching positions, until settling permanently in Massachusetts near Amherst in the 1960s, where Margaret painted and wrote poetry. It was here she met Dr. Rodolph Turcotte%E2%80%94the psychiatrist at the heart of Scissors%E2%80%94and suffered the first of several psychotic episodes. A stroke more than 20 years earlier left her paralyzed on her left side, though still able to write and speak. Robison recounts the key events in her life%E2%80%94from the physical abuse she suffered at the hands of John throughout their marriage to her various institutionalizations and her thinly veiled criticism of Burroughs's own memoirs%E2%80%94with excessive detail that exhausts rather than enlightens the reader. (May)