- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st Edition edition (April 29 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312342020
- ISBN-13: 978-0312342029
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14.2 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 340 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #158,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Amazon Best of the Month, April 2008: When I started reading A Wolf at the Table, I thought I knew what to expect. Augusten Burroughs captures intense experience with an inexplicably cool remove, imparting a stillness and purity to emotions that would likely run amok in anyone else's hands. I love this quality of his writing, and it's present in full force in this memoir of a childhood spent in thrall to a predatory and deeply unpredictable father. What I wasn't prepared for was the suspense--the dread-filled, nearly sonorous waiting for the worst to happen. An artful sort of bait-and-switch happens in the telling: Burroughs brings you to the brink of a terrible catharsis more than once, but the break in tension never comes. It is profoundly sad, remarkably tender, and fueled by a sense of love and reverence that only a child knows. --Anne Bartholomew
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A searing, emotional portrait of a son who wants nothing more than the love his father will not grant him, Burroughs's latest memoir (after 2004's Dry) is indeed powerful. Absent is the wry humor of Running with Scissors and the absurd poignancy of Burroughs's years living with his mother's Svengali-like psychiatrist. Instead, Burroughs focuses on the years he lived both in awe and fear of his philosophy professor father in Amherst, Mass. Despite frequent trips with his mother to escape his father's alcoholic rages, Burroughs was determined to win his father's affection, secretly touching the man's wallet and cigarettes and even going so far as to make a surrogate dad with pillows and discarded clothing. Only after his father's neglect—or cruelty—leads to the death of Burroughs's beloved guinea pig during one of the family's many separations does the son turn against the father. Avoiding self-pity, Burroughs paints his father with unwavering honesty, forcing the reader to confront, as he did, a man who even on his deathbed, refused his son a hint of affection. His father missed so much, Burroughs muses, not knowing his son. Luckily, Burroughs does not deny the reader such an enormous pleasure. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another great book for my Augusten Burroughs collection!,
By
This review is from: A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father (Paperback)
I am a huge fan of all Burroughs' other works, but having heard mixed reviews about A Wolf At the Table, I was a bit reluctant to pick it up. But thankfully a friend gave it to me as a gift, because I loved it! It is another memoir, filling in many of the gaps about Burroughs' early life that he hasn't mentioned in his other stories. This one is more comparable to Running With Scissors in style, and is more on the serious side than the funnier/lighter Magical Thinking and Possible Side Effects. While Burroughs' father has little presence in the other stories, A Wolf At the Table brings to light his strange role in Burroughs' life and odd upbringing. Burroughs' other stories display humour towards his childhood and adult life, and a real laugh-it-off attitude; but this story had me really feeling sympathy for what he went through, and realizing the depth and seriousness of the situation.While some parts did seem a little extreme/exaggerated, I think that just represents how much of an effect his father's behaviour had on him. Kudos to Augusten Burroughs for turning his strange childhood into a great story that will entertain and amaze many!
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Suspenseful and Very Real,
By
This review is from: A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father (Hardcover)
As a huge fan of Augusten Burrough books, I looked forward to reading A Wolf at the Table. This book is quite different than his others, it is a serious and passionate memoir and his life with his father.The first paragraph was enough to draw me into the book and Burrough's life. From the beginning, the tension is almost unbearable as facts about his father are slowly revealed. The awfulness that was his father and the thoughts of the young Burroughs makes this book memorable and powerful. I found this passage particularly poignant. When Burrough's was five years old, he went to Mexico with his mother. He meets a man and writes: "But he adored me and I knew it. This was a new, euphoric sensation. My first taste of a drug. I wanted more." By the author of the award winning book, Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to read, impossible to put down,
By
This review is from: A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father (Hardcover)
It is true that this book may have been therapeutic for the author, I somehow doubt that it has eased his pain. This books captures the essence of mental abuse --- from the subtlest nuances to the most blatant whacks of a psychological hammer.Mr. Burroughs is an incredible writer; he captures our most complex human experiences in the turn of a phrase or an artful metaphor with a clarity second to none I've read in a long while.
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