List Price: $14.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.08 You Save: $3.92 (28%)as of 11/22/2009 11:29 EST
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312428273
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0312428278
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: March 31, 2009
Publisher: Picador
Release Date: March 31, 2009
Studio: Picador
Features:
Related Items:
Alternate Versions: Click to Display
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
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
Product Description:
Nominated for the 2009 Audiobook of the Year
“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.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Having read all of Augusten Burroughs' books, I was hesitant to read this one after I saw some of the negative reviews. But I stand corrected. I think readers who didn't like this book were expecting the hilarity of Running With Scissors and Dry. Wolf at the Table doesn't have the funny-disturbing stories you're used to with Burroughs. Rather, the book is simply disturbing (and heartfelt at the same time). I loved this book. He is stunningly honest, and his detailing of events through the lens of a child is poignant and gripping. It really makes you realize the importance of being a good parent and how much influence, good and bad, you can have on your child.
If you're looking for another Running With Scissors, you should read I Love Yous Are for White People: A Memoir (P.S.)
It's great!
Rating: -
Very good book, as usual from this author. Fast delivery and in great shape when recieved.
Rating:  -
I liked Running with Scissors and the movie that was made from it. I liked Magical Thinking less. I liked Possible Side Effects even less. I don't know why I even bother reading any of his work anymore because I obviously don't really like it. I really didn't like this book. I was bored the entire time, wishing that he would stop whining about how his dad didn't love him. I kept waiting for the big shocking revelation that would make the reason for the book clear. It never came. While the writing was good, the subject matter was beyond self-indulgent and bordering on scary obsessive.
Rating: -
This is a searing portrait of a totally inadequate and cruel man who withheld all love and affection from his son. You really feel the deprivation right along with Augusten, and find yourself wishing YOU could hug him. The book is beautifully and poignantly
written, and though this father probably shouldn't have had children, one must be happy that he did. The author is very talented.
Rating: -
Augusten Burroughs is one of those rare writers who is able to make the usually cliche slice-of-life genre immediate and highly entertaining - oftentimes, it's either one or the other; most times, it's neither. While most writers of this kind are either highly self-critical and introspective to the point of narcissism or the champions of romanticizing the bleak aspects of the human condition with anti-heroic longings and misfit pseudo-tragedy, Burrow's doesn't visit his pathology on his readers. Rather, he creates not the typical farrago of doubts by which the genre seems to abide but a cohesive tapestry of one who is fully aware of the "Odysseun" journey of one's own psycho-social evolution from inherently fractured to nicely Scotch-taped - which, according to Burroughs, is all we can really hope for. The story illuminates his abusive father and (as a result) Burroughs' own inner demons with, at once, intimacy, levity, and reasonable detachment. This produces an almost-but-not-quite omniscient narrative that demands absolutely nothing from the reader that he/she won't give willingly and, perhaps, lovingly.
|
