A Wolf at the Table - Augusten Burroughs

Several years ago, I read Augusten Burroughs's memoir Running with Scissors (later turned into a movie). I found it disturbing that he had so much abuse and tragedy in his life, but he seemed intent on minimizing it and just trying to get a laugh. Reviews of the book hailed it as hilarious, and given that it was supposedly true, I found the whole thing profoundly sad. Since then, I have been reluctant to read his other books, but something moved me the other day and I picked this one up. A Wolf at the Table focuses on Burroughs's relationship (or lack of) with his father. Burroughs lived with his father until he was about 12 years old and his parents divorced. During those years, Burroughs is brutally honest about the lengths he went to to get his father to notice him and to physically touch or hold him, and the pain he felt at small and frequent realizations that his father did not care one bit about him. Burroughs's father's behavior, however, goes beyond neglect, as he seems to manipulate Augusten and go out of his way to destroy things (and pets) that Augusten loves. As we later learn in Running with Scissors, Augusten's mother herself suffers from profound mental illness, and certainly battered wives' syndrome, and is unable to explain anything to Augusten, though she does go to lengths to protect him from his father's violence. Strangely, Augusten does have an older brother, who remains with his father in the times when Augusten and his mother escape. The sibling relationship is touched upon, but it appears that Augusten has little understanding of who his brother is or why it is okay to leave his brother with their father. I would be quite interested in learning what happened to Augusten's brother and how he viewed and coped with their dysfunctional family. A Wolf at the Table was a much more honest memoir in my mind than Running with Scissors. Burroughs reveals what he thinks he remembers, and is pretty good at reporting his actual feelings at the time, and then providing some hindsight. This is a sad book and is not the witty funny Burroughs, as he has come to be portrayed in the literary media. Unlike Running with Scissors, however, this book did make me care about Burroughs as a person, and made me more interested in his later life. Accordingly, I plan to read Dry - his memoir about his struggles with alcohol, and probably reread Running with Scissors with this more informed background.