A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father | 
 enlarge | Creators: Augusten Burroughs, Patti Smith, Ingrid Michaelson, Sea Wolf, Tegan Quin
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $13.43
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Rating:  115 reviews
Sales Rank: 41235
Format: Audiobook, Cd
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 8
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6 x 5.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 142720425X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781427204257
ASIN: 142720425X
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: NEW FACTORY SEALED- READ BY THE AUTHOR- AUDIO CD- 8 CD'S- (MB) ISBN:9781427204257
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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
“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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 110 more reviews...
 Not what I thought it would be October 2, 2008
I love anything Augusten. Running with Scissors is still my favorite book. I think I am the only one disappointed in A Wolf at the Table. I felt throughout the book he was an annoying kid and a whiner to the end. I think I would have had more compassion if he would have covered more of exactly what his father did except ignore him. Obviously there is more to it, I needed to read it, feel it, feel for the guy. I only felt it at the end in the room with the robes, when he realized what a real father's love is.
His suggestions to his brother to kill his father, then to his father to push his mother off the bridge makes me wonder if Augusten is all there himself. I was very disappointed in the book. Although a small thin book it took me a long while to get through it waiting for the impact his other books brought me, this gave me none. I didn't care for it at all.
 Not his best, but still a remarkable read. September 30, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Well he did it. Augusten Burroughs, whose finest trait as an author of narrative nonfiction was almost ridiculous objectivity, finally succumbed to moments of self-pity. But who wouldn't? I wonder if while writing The Wolf at the Table, Burroughs simply had to show that little boy the love he so desperately craved. It's not his best work, true. In my humble opinion, his best is Dry. I am a student of writing and therefore I'm always looking at the effective use of craft and while it's difficult to pinpoint in Burroughs work (other than a knack for witty and snappy turns of phrase) I will say this. His work is difficult to put down. You can't help but turn the page, find out what happened next and how he's going to tell it. And unlike other reviewers, I stopped asking myself if it was plausible early on. Who cares? He may not be literary, he may be embellishing for drama, and he may have caved to the self-involved urges of many memoirists (ironically his major distinction previously) but Burroughs knows how to tell a tale. His readers number in the millions now, but his voice is still that of a friend confiding to a friend. Bravo, Burroughs. Now let's see some fiction.
Not good. September 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
First let me say, that I am a big fan of Augusten Burroughs. I will also say that I was aware that this book wasn't going to be funny so I had no expectations of that. I also listened to this book on CD, as I did all of his other books. I will also say that I did in fact listen to the entire book including all songs accompanied with it. I would like to tell you that all of those people who gave a poor review were telling the truth. I have a BIG problem with how Burroughs read this book. Whoever told him to read so incredibly slowly should be fired. It distracted from the story and was so slow, you'd forget his point by the time he got to the end of his sentence. It was like he was reading to a very dumb child or someone who has no grasp of the English language. The director of this audiobook, in my opinion, gave him very bad direction. I have always enjoyed listening to him read his books in the past. This was an unwelcome departure. Yes, his father obviously has narcissistic and sadistic tendencies, and I can listen to just about anything, but the animal abuse occurred frequently throughout the story and I truly had severe difficulty listening to it. Burroughs, has valid complaints about his father's parenting skills, but the story is also peppered with accounts that basically make Burroughs look like a whiny brat at the time and a whiny adult now complaining about the most minute details. A lot of the things his father did, with not paying attention to Augusten, or being particularly affectionate, was no different than the average overworked, overstressed father. This is one to skip. Also, by the way, the music was NOT GOOD and added very little. Someone on this site, mentioned the "funeral dirge", that is a great description of one of the songs. Burroughs should stop rehashing his life story. It is soooo done, between him and his brother's writing, enough, please. I encourage Burroughs to try fiction again. I really enjoyed his Sellevision novel. This is definitely one to pass on, at the very least don't listen to his CD between the awful music and his excruciatingly slow reading, there is no chance of enjoying it.
A Brutally Honest Story September 28, 2008
In past books written by Augusten Burroughs, we read about his dysfunctional childhood. We laughed with him and we cried with him, often wondering how he managed to survive. With A Wolf at the Table, Burroughs explores the relationship between father and son, and the extremes of love and hate. His writing is insightful and honest, not only writing about his relationship with his father, but everyone's need for love and validation. He suffered as a child, but emerged as an adult full of hope and promise.
Having read all of Burroughs' books, I thought I knew what to expect in A Wolf at the Table. Having experienced the trauma, I expected Burroughs to write in a cool, detached manor. He didn't. Burroughs used both humor and suspense to evoke tears, laughter, and horror in his readers.
A Wolf at the Table is a brutally honest story told from a child's point of view. I wanted to cry for the child, but found myself cheering for the man that emerged from the pits of hell relatively unscathed.
Like Burroughs, Hate this book September 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have all of Burroughs' books and was really looking forward to A Wolf at the Table. But this is not just disappointing, it's out right annoying. The narrative is cloying, self pitying, desperate, whiney and not trust worthy. I understand that Burroughs has had a insanely difficult life, but whereas his other books deal with his past in humor and a wry eye, this one is a humorless and over the top retelling.
It feels as if the author had incidents that haven't fit into his other books and in an effort to fill the autobiography, he has padded the pages with intricate details from his (and his father's) very early years. It doesn't seem right to question Burroughs' honesty, but I have a very hard time believing his vivid high chair memories.
In fairness, I haven't been able to finish it yet, but that's because I embarrassed myself while reading it on a plane this weekend. I made a loud guttural sound and sighed "you've got to be freaking kidding me" when reading "We were to have a new septic system. At first I was wary, afraid of the equipment. The bulldozer was like a giant poisonous yellow spider tearing apart the land to lay its eggs."
I think this entire book would have made a very compelling and concise New Yorker article, but as a book...it's just a pathetic read.
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