Product Description

“As a little boy, I had a dream that my father had taken me to the woods where there was a dead body. He buried it and told me I must never tell. It was the only thing we’d ever done together as father and son, and I promised not to tell. But unlike most dreams, the memory of this one never left me. And sometimes…I wasn’t altogether sure about one thing: was it just a dream?” When Augusten Burroughs was small, his father was a shadowy presence in his life: a form on the stairs, a cough from the basement, a silent figure smoking a cigarette in the dark. As Augusten grew older, something sinister within his father began to unfurl. Something dark and secretive that could not be named. Betrayal after shocking betrayal ensued, and Augusten’s childhood was over. The kind of father he wanted didn’t exist for him. This father was distant, aloof, uninterested… And then the “games” began. With A Wolf at the Table, Augusten Burroughs makes a quantum leap into untapped emotional terrain: the radical pendulum swing between love and hate, the unspeakably terrifying relationship between father and son. Told with scorching honesty and penetrating insight, it is a story for anyone who has ever longed for unconditional love from a parent. Though harrowing and brutal, A Wolf at the Table will ultimately leave you buoyed with the profound joy of simply being alive. It’s a memoir of stunning psychological cruelty and the redemptive power of hope.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75821 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-29
• Released on: 2008-04-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.com
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.)
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From AudioFile
Be prepared for something completely different from popularauthor/satirist Augusten Burroughs. From the opening track, anoriginal song by rocker Patti Smith, to the emotionally drainingepilogue, listeners are in for an unusual and innovative listeningexperience. Including songs and sound effects, Burroughs's newestmemoir is the story of a sensitive child longing for love from anemotionally unavailable father, a dangerous, even deadly man, given toplaying demented "games." Burroughs's narrative voice is shivery,breathy, slow, and humorless, for there is nothing humoroushere. Intense, sincere, and passionate, Burroughs offers a deeplyfelt, intimate portrait of the most disastrous period in his life. Heholds nothing back, and in fully giving voice to his emotions, hemakes each moment immediate for the listener. S.J.H. © AudioFile2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Suspenseful and Very Real
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.

Hard to read, impossible to put down
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.

Another great book for my Augusten Burroughs collection!
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!