A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father
by Augusten Burroughs
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Book Reviews of A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father
Book Review: And now for something completely different....
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a dedicated reader of Augusten Burroughs. The release date of this book had been marked in my day planner, and I went straight out to buy it the day it came out. This book is probably not what you are expecting it to be. It might be better.
It is not a funny story. You might laugh out loud once or twice, but not more than that. This book is disturbing, throat-clenching, and heartbreaking. It is beautifully written, and Burroughs creates the sense within that you are floating above his little-boy body as he fights desperately for the attention of his cold and sometimes downright terrifying father. It is a difficult and, at times, painful perspective to take. It feels like the little boy you knew who was obsessed with all things shiny and becoming a star had just been putting on a show. Only now are we getting the full story.
If "Dry" was your favorite book by the author, you will love this one, as I did. But if you are looking only for the biting wit that Burroughs has come to be known for, you may find yourself disappointed. "Dry" combined the heartbreak with the absurdly funny. "Wolf" focuses on the heartbreak. I have never before been so upset by plot elements dealing with pets.
I thought it was amazing. I closed the final page and was convinced that Burroughs is even more brilliant a writer than I had previously believed. If you're anything like me, when you finish reading you will have the overwhelming urge to find him and give him the biggest hug you can muster. The intimacy created with the reader in this book is like nothing I have ever read before. Just like when a good friend tells you about something incredibly awful that happened to them, and you don't know what to say in response, this book leaves you speechless. It is like you have been trusted with the biggest secret of your life, something that is not your business to repeat to anyone else.
I highly recommend it, but not for light reading.
Book Review: Another Side of Burroughs' Genius
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading Burroughs' laugh-til-you-cry Magical Thinking, I was unprepared for this look into the dark childhood delivered in A Wolf at the Table, in which he describes himself as "prey." Burroughs has perhaps the unmatched writing ability to develop a lonely, fear-filled childhood, into creative genius. The mother he describes was the only barrier between him and a cruel, mentally ill father, who was given to flashes of extraordinary anger and continual emotional abuse and neglect. Yet, the mother also suffered from bouts of mental collapse and was emotionally absent when she was most needed. Then there was the older brother, who had abandoned the household - and the young Augusten - early in the story, and became an unexpected tutor in an unsettling segment of the book. Those who criticized Burroughs' treatment of The Mouse in Magical Thinking will rethink (perhaps rewrite their reviews) after reading about his relationships with and love for Ernie and Grover. (His father killed both and turned a beloved third pet against him.) By leaving gaps in the narrative, his own questions unanswered and maintaining the child's voice, Burroughs injects a hard realism that the reader otherwise might question. How could one survive the absence of sustained nurturing and overt affection? The metaphorical wolf is not just the father, but the relatives on both sides of the writer's family. Without spending a lot of time on them, he gives insight into generational dysfunctional. In a telling episode his mother compares one of the dogs to her own mother. Although Burroughs displays the most anguish when he describes doing anything to get his father to touch him, to even look at him, he continued this unrequited quest into adulthood. Speaking of both his parents, he wrote, "I occupied the space physically, but none of their attention." The epilogue so brilliantly completes the book that upon finishing it, I called each beloved child to say, "Very much I love you."Book Review: An authentic look at a lonely childhood
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the first book I read by Burroughs, so I think that I had a bit of an advantage on other people who had read his previous work. I tend to stay away from memoirs to begin with. To me they are generally pretty boring and the authors usually end up sounding like either great whiners or petty bores. And some of the details that Burroughs writes about in this book may saddle him with that same tag, but the emotions that he is able to dredge up outshine any confessions that struck me as unnecessary or too one sided. Indeed, that seems to me to be the greatest strength of the book. The emotions are raw and unfiltered to the degree that they are intensely childlike, there is almost no filter of the mature adult. It is all the greedy emotion of the child who just wants the love and affection of their father. It is irrelevant that his father is in constant pain from arthritis and alcoholism. The child in the book only wants love and the precious gift of time from his parents, neither of which he gets. Other reviews have focused on the intenst narcacissim in the book, but isn't that the point? Who isn't completely focused on themselves and their own needs at that age? I thought the book to be a quite authentic look at the needs and wants(despite how selfish they may be) of a young child. Whether the details are true or not is beside the point; the emotions are crystal clear and almost piercing in their clarity. Focusing on what is true and what is not is a con game of the publishers who market this book. They bank on people reading the book for the sheer joy of reading about a train wreck of a family, or squealing in delight when we come to a part that rings false. The details are unimportant. The book is a faithful recreation of a childhood spent isolated and in fear of the people who are supposed to love you the most. Debating whether it's true or not is a waste of time.Book Review: Time for New Topic
Summary: 2 Stars
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.
Book Review: Misses the Mark
Summary: 3 Stars
Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am a big fan of Augusten Burroughs' other works, and also that I am reviewing the audiobook version of this book. Other reviewers (and the author himself) have noted that this book is a major departure from the style of his other memoirs. Unfortunately, Burroughs' efforts at drama are not nearly as elegant or developed as his efforts at humor.
This book should have been about a boy who overcomes emotional abandonment and neglect to become a healthy whole person. Instead it is an overly wrought melodrama that often hints at a horror that is never actually shown.
Burroughs does an excellent job of creating a world through a child's eyes, with a characteristically immature sense of entitlement, self-importance and drama. As adults, we understand (and remember) such feelings and can relate to the narrator's emotional distress at the small tragedies of childhood: the death of a pet, feeling misunderstood and unloved by parents. The problem with this book is that the author can not seem to decide, in adulthood, which events were true horrors and which were just unfortunate circumstances. This confusion dilutes the potential emotional impact of his story.
The audiobook version is read by the author (as usual), but with extra melodramatic inflection. In case the reader is too dense or emotionally dead to understand, Burroughs intones, wails and gargles through prose that is pretty heavy-handed to start with. Less scenery chewing would have been a lot more effective.
On the other hand, the audiobook version includes original music that is wonderfully evocative. According to an afterward by Burroughs, the songs were written for the book, after the composers had read it. Patti Smith is still tops.