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A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Augusten Burroughs Reader: Augusten Burroughs Performer: Patti Smith Performer: Sea Wolf Performer: Ingrid Michaelson Performer: Tegan Quin Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2009-03-31 ISBN: 0312428278 Number of pages: 272 Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My FatherBook Review: Five Stars + a W A R N I N G... seriously... Summary: 5 Stars
There are few people who can convey the distorted human emotion within the intensity of insanity and all it's situations like Augusten Burroughs. The range of personal experience that he is able to communicate is broad, deep and terrifying to the uninitiated. For that matter,it is not an easy, or comfortable, read even for those amongst us who have enjoyed, treasured or laughed out loud at his previous works.
Whereas Running With Scissors, et al were astounding works of survival that, if they did not end on a particularly "happy" note, were well informed in the end by a sort of hope - albeit bruised, battered, torn up inside and in tears on the outside sort of hope... in my opinion such is not the case with A Wolf at the Table.
The final chapters provide the reader with AB, years after the abuse of commission by his father, but very much still suffering from the abuse of omission which so often complicates the lives of "survivors" and Make No Doubt that AB is a survivor. It is in fact the nature of his survival mechanisms, both healthy and NOT which are briefly touched upon in Wolf and fueled the content in Magical Thinking.
This book is a Very Challenging Read for those whose relationship with there father figure is not "hale & hearty" as they say [it caused more than one instance of the Bad Kind of personal identification with the author on the part of this reviewer] without it's final message of "survival is what you make it, however you make it" this style of writing would be an extended emotional GougeFest recommended for only the profound masochist.
Having provided those sort of run-on caveats; there are moments of sweaty palmed fear for the young Augusten and moist eyed recognition of the early demons, which are fleshed out in earlier works, sprouting around the beautiful boy.
Get a copy of Running With Scissors and see if you like his style and the nature of the story he tells; if so then this will not dissapoint as it essentially fills in a number of empty spaces in that books portrait of his father.
Summary of A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My FatherNominated 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. 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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