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India Press Store - A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father
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List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $13.99
Your Save: $ 10.96 ( 44% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312342029
ISBN: 0312342020
Label: St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2008-04-29
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Release Date: 2008-04-29
Studio: St. Martin's Press
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Wolf at the Table
Comment: While his was definately a disfunctional family - I found Augusten to be a bit too whiney and overly dramatic. Wouldn't recommend the book at least in audio form where his deliverly left me unsympathic - just annoyed. I did however enjoy some of the music.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a wolf that grows on you
Comment: It started slow but i'm glad I didn't give up on it, because it really grabbed about 1/3rd of the way in.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Wolf At The Table
Comment: Although this is not my favorite Augusten Burroughs book, I enjoyed it from begining to end.
It gave me new insight to Augusten that I didn't have when I read 'Running With Scissors' and 'Dry'.
I hope that Augusten keeps on writing, because I will keep on reading his works.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A wolf??? I don't know!
Comment: I expected to connect with this author. After reading the 4 and 5 star reviews, I was eager to begin the journey into Augusten's past. Boy, what a disappointment! I thought I'd read a memoir replete with details making this so called "wolf" come alive! I desparately tried to create this monster, but simply couldn't with Borrough's lack of details and exaggerated accounts of his past. A sick man, indeed. An alcholic I won't deny, but Augusten mentions dad's debilating disease, his dad's own abuse he endured as a child. I think he could have been much worse! A killer, I doubt it. I think in the mind of a child, things can often be very much exaggerated and blurred. Details were spared in this memoir leaving the reader hanging, confused, and with no other choice but to assume things. Not really fair. I did cry while reading the epilogue, however. Coming to the realization that there are loving dads in this world that show affection and act on that affection is eye opening and can be depressing for someone never experiencing unconditional love of a parent.
What truely shocked me was that for such an intelligent child with insight and terrific perspective, he chose to follow a similar path in life as the man he ultimately despised.
That said, not a hair-raising book as cover depicts! Boo.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Time for New Topic
Comment: I have been a fan of Mr. Burroughs since the publication of Running With Scissors. DRY is right up there with one of the most memorable and influential books I have read. His writing is solid, often terse, and always captivating and intense, bringing the emotions and events of his life right into the room with the reader.
So I was looking forward to his latest book - A Wolf at the Table - and sadly, I did not even finish reading it. It is such a sorry retread of where Mr. Burroughs has already so brilliantly and realistically taken us in the past. The prose is tepid and the topic is rendered tedious and inert because Mr. Burroughs has already covered his childhood through many lens' this one being the least engaging. Or maybe just one too many of the same thing. The protagonist and antagonist presented here do not come to life on these pages, something Burroughs has not had happen in his previous memoirs. I really did not care about these people in WOLF, even though one of them, Augusten, has already so fully engaged me in his life, that I thought that anything he did or put to paper would be as unique, insightful, and compelling as always, I did not happen in WOLF. Both father and son stayed glued to the paper, inert and dull, terribly linear and formulaic.
It seems to be time to tackle other topics or events in his life that are beyond bad parents - awful, cruel, evil parents. Mr. Burroughs has such a wonderful sense of how to convey emotions, experiences, and observations that it should not be such a stretch for him to move on and outward. His keen irony about life, his ability to evoke laughter from circumstances that are truly beyond laughter, his ability to grab hold of a reader and keep her in her seat until one of his books is finished - all these talents are something I look forward to. And hope to again.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Amazon Significant Seven, 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
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