Review: A Wolf at the Table

Title: A Wolf at the Table

Author: Augusten Bur­roughs

Pub­lisher: St. Martin’s Press

Date (to be) Pub­lished: April 2008

Syn­op­sis: (from pub­lisher)

“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.

Why Did It Come From? Barnes and Nobles dis­count book section.

Why Did I Choose It? The cover and title intrigued me.

My Review:

This book at times was a hard read.  The hor­rors this child expe­ri­ences are at so awful and all he wants is for his father to show him some sem­blance of love.  It is how­ever, very well writ­ten and hav­ing not read any of his other works, I am now inter­ested in read­ing those as well.  It’s amaz­ing that he even made it to adulthood.

It is a touch­ing mem­oir reveal­ing how some­one can rise from the pit of their child­hood and not become his father.

I would sug­gest this book to any­one who enjoys a good mem­oir that makes you really look at a less than per­fect childhood.