A prequel to Running With Scissors , this memoir tells the story of the author's relationship with his tormented father - a man who sent his wife mad and saw his other son run away from home, prior to Augusten going into foster care.

A powerful evocation of an American childhood like the US greats, Catcher in the Rye , and My Dark Places . A memoir with the magical quality of not just describing childhood but actually making the reader remember what it was like to be a child. The prequel to international hit Running With Scissors , Wolf at the Table tells the story of Augusten's relationship with his tormented father. A man who sent his wife mad and saw his other son run away from home, prior to Augusten going into foster care. Harrowing, insightful and amusing by turns, this book contains all of the quirks his fans adore.From the author: 'My father doesn't feature much in Running with Scissors . And one of the reasons for this is because he didn't feature much in my life. But there's another reason, too: our relationship was so complicated, so dark, so confusing and so big, that to tell the story would require a book. So finally, upon the death of my father in 2005, I decided to tell the story I have been most afraid yet most compelled to tell. In some respects, I look at this book as my biggest, most personally challenging project to date. Because my father - not my mother - has always been the driving force behind my ambition'.

Memoir about the bestselling autobiographer's father manages flashes of insight but turns into yet another baroque chronicle of Burroughs's damaged childhood (Possible Side Effects, 2006, etc.).In a dramatic early scene, his father explodes: 'Goddamn you,' he spit in my face. 'Just this barrage of incessant talking on and on and on you cannot simply dominate a room and the thoughts and attentions of every person in that room simply because you are in it.' It's a completely disproportionate response to some routine toddler nagging, and the brutal spanking that accompanies it is a precursor of more abuse to come. Those familiar with Burroughs's particularly gothic familial mythos (previously focused on adolescence and early adulthood) will recognize his mother in her several manic, pill-popping appearances here. Instead of Svengali-like psychiatrists or his own self-destructive obsessions, the villain this time is the author's father, a philosophy professor and brooding drunk whose intellectual prowess only serves to further exacerbate his black moods and desire for solitude. Burroughs begins with some impressionistic early childhood memories, only getting around to any substantive consideration of his father some 80 pages into the text, when the boy becomes convinced that the man has killed his guinea pig. While Burroughs deftly builds a creepy portrait of a skulking, violence-prone predator, too often his subject is obscured by florid, overheated prose. After many pages of invective, not all of which seems warranted, the author finally demonstrates some perspective, writing, All he was guilty of was not wanting me. A deeply felt personal essay padded to book length. (Kirkus Reviews)