First thoughts about "A Wolf at the Table" by Augusten Burroughs

I'm probably one of the few people who read "A Wolf at the Table," a memoir of Augusten Burroughs' father before reading his own memoir, "Running with Scissors." I've seen that some other readers who discovered him much earlier than I did, feel "A Wolf at the Table" changes all the impressions they had of him, his childhood and family. Having only read his first novel, "Sellevision," which wasn't about his own personal experiences, as far as I know, I can't say if this is true or not. I'll see if my impressions change after reading "Running with Scissors."

"A Wolf at the Table" is the type of book that just makes you cringe, whether the events that take place are all true or not. There's not much physical violence, but it's emotional violence that makes you want to curl up into a ball and hide in the closet. As an animal lover who babysat a guinea pig, owned a hamster and has never been without at least two dogs, Burroughs' experiences with his beloved guinea pig and two of the three dogs he grew up with are heartbreaking. (Thank goodness there aren't any cats in the book, because I don't know if I could have taken it.) Even though it was obvious in most cases that it was coming, it didn't lessen the pain and shock I felt for the poor hamster, Ernie, who his father starved to death and left in his own filth, for the dog who was the only one his father never allowed in the house and suffered with a tumor in his mouth without ever being taken to the vet or Burroughs' faithful companion, who had once protected him against his father but was somehow turned against the young boy by his father while he was away for a few days.

About three-fourths of the way through, when he is about 12 years old, the book quickly skips over a huge block of time when he says he was living with his mother's psychiatrist. I assume this is explored more fully in "Running with Scissors," but it disrupted the flow of this book. The chapters after this point seem unconnected and fly through time, skipping over several years at once showing Burroughs' struggles with his career in advertising, alcoholism, continued strained relationship with his father, deterioration of his mother and his father's eventual death. His father leaves Burroughs his diaries, most of which include mundane writings about the weather and gas prices, but in one entry it mentions that Augusten had been distant that day, and his father speculates that it's because of his "games." In a way, that kind of makes the whole book make a little more sense, but I was left feeling as though I wasn't completely sure what had actually happened, what might have been severely or slightly exaggerated and what his father was really like. Did his father truly have rotting teeth, peeling skin that bloodied his shirts and such a terrible relationship with his son that he chased him through the woods at night? I'm hoping reading his earlier work will shed some light on those questions.