Claire Conger

Augusten Burroughs begins Toil & Trouble explaining how he learned that he was a witch. I was not expecting fiction, so I checked the library marking on the book’s spine: Is it ‘B’ for biography, or ‘F’ for fiction? The spine read ‘B’; I skipped ahead. The book turns out to be about Mr. Burroughs’s moving with his partner from New York City to Connecticut, and in the process, re-connecting with his mother, but only after her death. Premonitions turn out to be the most important of Mr. Burroughs’s witch characteristics, characteristics we are told he inherited from his mother’s side of the family. Readers of Running with Scissors will recognize mentions of his early years with his mother deteriorating and her psychiatrist taking over his life.