A Wolf at the Table

A Wolf at the Table is a memoir by Augusten Burroughs. Published in 2008, the book recounts Burroughs’ early childhood and his turbulent relationship with his father. It is the author’s third memoir on a variety of subjects and periods in his life. A Wolf at the Table spent six weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, peaking at number two, and reached number nine on the Wall Street Journal’s Best Seller List.

Augustin sets out to write the story of his relationship with his father. He begins by recording some of his earliest memories, from the time he was still a toddler, and he calls upon his mother to fill in some of the gaps in his memory. Even though his mother at first doubts Augusten can remember so far back, she then concedes that she also has memories from when she was very young.

During a trip to Mexico with his mother and a family friend, five-year-old Augusten meets a local guide who is very affectionate and fond of him. He contrasts the male guide to his own absent father and realizes that having a positive male role model is a new sensation for him. Augusten’s mother tells him that his biological father is dangerous and that they can’t be around him.



Next, Augusten discusses the years he spent living with both his parents and his interactions with his father. He characterizes his father as distant and rarely available to his family. During the 1960s, Augusten’s father was a philosophy professor who rejected Augusten’s attempts at affection. At home he was distant and aloof, rarely giving Augusten the attention he craved. Augusten recounts a story in which he borrowed clothes from his father’s closet to fashion into a doll, which he then splashed with his father’s cologne. He says that he used to cuddle with the effigy as if it were a cloth monkey.

It is eventually revealed that Augusten’s father suffers from numerous health issues, including crippling arthritis and severe psoriasis, both of which cause constant pain. He drinks heavily and quarrels with Augusten’s mother, leading to the eventual disintegration of their marriage.

When he is about eight or nine, Augusten purchases a guinea pig named Ernie. When Augusten returns from a trip, he finds Ernie dead in his cage and immediately suspects his father of not caring for the pet while he was away. This marks a turning point in Augusten’s relationship with his father, where he moves from craving his affection and trying to please him to hating and resenting him.



The family situation deteriorates after that. Augusten’s father becomes increasingly paranoid and neurotic, lashing out at his children for seemingly little reason. His mother reacts by becoming a pill addict. She tries several times to take Augusten and leave but is always drawn back into the relationship. Augusten’s older brother also becomes strange and withdrawn, although the family does not know at the time that this is probably due to him having undiagnosed autism.

Eventually, after Augusten’s father is involved in a drunk driving incident, Augusten’s mother takes him and separates from her husband for good. She leaves the adolescent Augusten in the care of her psychiatrist’s large extended family, a period in his life that makes up the subject of another memoir by Burroughs.

Some years later as an adult, Augusten finds himself broke and out of food between paychecks. Desperate, he calls his father to ask for help, reestablishing their relationship after many years. However, this fails to produce the tearful and contrite reunion that Augusten had hoped for, and so he sinks further into resentment. The final few chapters of the book recount how he became an alcoholic adult living in squalor.



He keeps in touch with his father by phone, even as he father remarries and moves to a secluded cabin in the wilderness. Augusten’s attempts to impress his father with the money he is making and the places he has travelled is futile.

Finally, Augusten visits his dying father in a nursing home and receives the closure he craves when his father tells him that he has been a good son. Augusten’s father dies soon after, and in reading through his father’s old journals, he finds a few mentions of his own name as well as the confirmation that his father was distant and unemotional even in his private life.

While Burroughs presents all the instances in A Wolf at the Table as true, it is worth noting that an earlier memoir, Running with Scissors, was the subject of a libel suit brought by some of the people he had written about. The suit, which was settled out of court in 2005, alleged that Burroughs routinely exaggerated his claims in a ruthless and malicious way. A Wolf at the Table has not come under such scrutiny, but Burroughs’ father, the subject of the story, had passed away by the time he book was published.