A Wolf at the Table

It seems unlikely that this disturbing memoir from Augusten Burroughs will achieve the popularity of his prior efforts, DRY and RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, but sales are not always the best definition of a book's success. Burroughs elevates his writing to a higher level by delving deeper than ever before into his own psyche and his twisted, though definitive, relationship with his father. Burroughs's abusive father was a philosophy professor whose complex intellectual obsessions isolated him from other people, particularly his own family. While at first he was merely a brooding peripheral presence in the life of young Augusten, he gradually begins to enact a torrent of abuse, both physical and psychological. As he brutally depicts this despicable behavior, Burroughs eventually determines that his father simply did not want him, but every dark and magnificent sentence of the book stands as a testament to his cathartic recovery.

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