Product Description

From the author: 'My father doesn't feature much in "Running with Scissors". And one of the reasons for this is because he didn't feature much in my life. But there's another reason, too: Our relationship was so complicated, so dark, so confusing and so big, that to tell the story would require a book. So finally, upon the death of my father in 2005, I decided to tell the story I have been most afraid yet most compelled to tell.' This prequel to international hit "Running With Scissors" tells the story of Augusten's relationship with his tormented father: a man who sent his wife mad and saw his other son run away from home, prior to Augusten going into foster care. It is harrowing, insightful and amusing by turns.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7464 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Back Cover
First there was Running with Scissors, then Dry and now the most famous memoirist of our time returns with his earliest childhood memories. In A Wolf at the Table, Burroughs makes a quantum leap forward into unmapped emotional terrain: the pendulum swing between love and hate within the terrifying relationship he endured with his tormented and sadistic father. By turns harrowing and heartbreaking, A Wolf at the Table is ultimately a redemptive story about love, longing and letting go.

'There is a depth here that moves his prose to another level. He has written a chilling, dark and deeply unsettling book that is, nonetheless, compulsive reading and makes you look back on your own childhood and realise it wasn’t that bad after all'
Attitude

'A very different beast from Burroughs’s previous memoirs … This disturbing tale of Burroughs’s early years and his troubled relationship with his father make for a much more uncompromising book'
Metro

'A hauntingly well-crafted account of his difficult relationship with his father'
Irish Sunday Independent

'A harrowing and cathartic memoir'
Dazed and Confused

'Burroughs's gift is to look into the lion's mouth and find sweetness'
Fay Weldon

'So touching and wonderfully written that anyone else with “a no misery memoir" rule should make an exception'
London Lite

About the Author
Augusten Burroughs was born and raised in Western Massachusetts. His first memoir, Running with Scissors remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over four consecutive years and was made into a film in October 2006. He is also the author of Dry (2003), Magical Thinking: True Stories (2004) and Possible Side Effects (2006), and Sellevision (2000) all of which were instant bestsellers both in hardcover and paperback.

Customer Reviews

Very different to Augusten's usual - dark, poignant but absorbing
Augusten Burroughs' books are synonymous with laugh-out-loud humour, self-analysis and a life so off-the-wall, they're barely believable. Having read all of his books, I couldn't wait to read his latest offering. However, while I found the book absorbing, it makes for a rather discomfitting read. Without giving the plot away, Burroughs takes us back to his childhood, when he lived with both his mother and father. Here was a childhood bereft of paternal love but moreover the book portrays a malevolent father who clearly suffered worsening mental health. This unfortunately manifested itself in some awful behaviour displayed by Burroughs' father and we are witness to a chain of events through the author's childhood. The book is clearly a catharsis for Burroughs but still has some humour blended throughout as he tries to make sense of his upbringing. Brave, poignant and at times quite disturbing.

Not his usual, and not even good
I eagerly awaited Augusten Burrough's new book to reach my hot little hands, as I have long been a follower. I couldn't finish this book, and not because it was dark - I don't mind that this is a story about him and his father, that there was incredible darkness, that this isn't a happy storry. I couldn't finish this book as it simply wasn't very good. Yes, his experiences were awful (there's a guinea pig scene in there that will be with me for the rest of my life), but they were no more or less worse than many people's experiences, and a writer of Burrough's caliber should've been able to do more with his own story.

A deep disappointment
"Running with Scissors" was a serious, multilayered comedy that, aside from being very funny, convinced me that Burroughs had a sensitive, intelligent view of human existence. This book about his father has no particular insights on human behavior and reduces even those scenes that could have some richness and complexity to the superficial and banal. Even the pivotal scene about the guinea pig falls flat. His father is simply a neurotic, egocentric, alcoholic. His son needs him and loves him, and then hates him. So what? There are a lot of people out there with such fathers.

Perhaps the main problem with the book is that by the time Burroughs writes about his father, he has distanced himself emotionally from him in a way in which he never had distanced himself from his mother, the main object of "Running with Scissors." I didn't find "A Wolf..." dark. I found it dull, and perhaps a bit forced. I found myself doubting that the events in the book actually happened (It's presented as an autobiography), not because they are so outlandish, but rather because they are so distanced that they don't ring true.