A Wolf at the TableA Memoir of My Father

Fans of the dark humor and grim whimsy of Augusten Burroughs’ previous memoirs — the filmified Running With Scissors, the underrated Dry — will be completely, utterly, repeatedly shocked by A Wolf At The Table. It’s still a memoir, the really true truth as Burroughs remembers it, but it’s also a horror story. Good versus evil? Sort of. More like boy versus monster. There’s our young protagonist, a kid starved for attention and barely old enough to understand what he’s up against. And in this corner, his dad, a full-fledged adult covered with bloody sores and fueled by rage, alcohol and erratic, sociopathic cruelty. Burroughs’ slow, deliberate narration — occasionally interspersed by musical interludes from Patti Smith, Ingrid Michaelson, Tegan Quin and Sea Wolf — plays every heartbreak for maximum effect, building the tension, helping you brace yourself for the next time the monster appears out of the fog. Although time and distance have allowed the author to turn his greatest pains into a spellbinding piece of literature, it’s clear he’s never forgiven the physical and psychological abuse he suffered at the hands of his (now deceased) father, or the shame and double-life living that came with it. The sentences drip with anger. The narrator is still seething, grasping for answers. You might quip that Burroughs has written more memoirs than any 40-something has a right to, but this intensely personal book could not exist without the others, and it is his best yet.