Wolf at the Table, Adam Rapp
Wolf at the Table, Adam Rapp
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
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Wolf at the Table

Author: Adam Rapp

Narrator: Paul Sparks

Unabridged: 15 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/19/2024


Synopsis

The Corrections meets We Need to Talk About Kevin in this harrowing multigenerational saga about a family harboring a serial killer in their midst, from the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award finalist playwright Adam Rapp.
 
As late summer 1951 descends on Elmira, New York, Myra Larkin, thirteen, the oldest child of a large Catholic family, meets a young man she believes to be Mickey Mantle. He chats her up at a local diner and gives her a ride home. The matter consumes her until later that night, when a triple homicide occurs just down the street, opening a specter of violence that will haunt the Larkins for half a century.

As the siblings leave home and fan across the country, each pursues a shard of the American dream. Myra serves as a prison nurse while raising her son, Ronan. Her middle sisters, Lexy and Fiona, find themselves on opposite sides of class and power. Alec, once an altar boy, is banished from the house and drifts into oblivion. As he becomes an increasingly alienated loner, his mother begins to receive postcards full of ominous portent. What they reveal, and what they require, will shatter a family and lead to devastating reckoning.

Through one family’s pursuit of the American dream, Wolf at the Table explores our consistent proximity to violence and its effects over time. Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Rapp writes with gorgeous acuity, cutting to the heart of each character as he reveals the devastating reality beneath the veneer of good society.
 

About Adam Rapp

Adam Rapp is the author of numerous young adult novels, including 33 Snowfish, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog, and The Buffalo Tree, which was the inspiration for his off-Broadway play The Metal Children. Adam Rapp has also written for TV (The L Word, In Treatment) and was shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2006. He lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by switterbug (Betsey) on January 24, 2024

An epic novel that spans almost fifty years from 1951—2010, WOLF AT THE TABLE satisfied several of my reading urges. Without being gratuitous, Rapp introduces characters with various mental health disorders, folded into a domestic drama of six siblings. They were raised by a withdrawn war vet father......more

Goodreads review by Cynthia on January 08, 2024

I hate to be the bad guy. While this book does have a few negative ratings, no one has written a negative review yet. I read the glowing ones, hoping their insight would help me discover something redeemable within this novel, but I do not feel even a fragment of what those who loved this felt. Ther......more

Goodreads review by NZLisaM on September 28, 2024

One sibling in a large Catholic family has the potential to be a serial killer. Will they give in to their darker urges? Elmira, New York – It’s 1951 when we first meet the Larkin Family – Donald 31, Ava 32, and their six children, Myra 13, Fiona 11, Alec 10, Joan 7, Lexy 4 and Archie 2 months. Every......more

Goodreads review by Jill on January 16, 2024

I went into this book believing the focus would be on a “family harboring a serial killer in their midst,” but Adam Rapp’s intentions are far more nuanced. In reality, Wolf at the Table is a meditation about the ubiquitous nature of evil and our constant proximity to it. To read it narrowly as a par......more

Goodreads review by Anthony on January 27, 2025

The reason I am giving this book five stars is not because it was written by my older brother. It’s because it is a beautifully crafted, poetic, deeply human novel about family, madness, violence, and heredity that moved me to my core. I’ve always been an admirer of my brother’s work, but this is hi......more


Quotes

Wolf at the Table is a masterful novel—strange and affecting, and immersive reading. Adam Rapp peers into the dark heart of America with shrewd and eerie grace, the likes of which I have not encountered since Kosiński.”—Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Independence Day and Canada

Praise for Know Your Beholder

"More often than any book I can easily recall, Rapp's novel had me laughing like a fool, embarrassing myself each time I unthinkingly brought it out in public. Perhaps more surprisingly, that humor felt entirely natural—born organically from the idiosyncrasies of the characters themselves rather than foisted on them... Rapp mostly dredges comedy from Francis' peculiar ways of seeing the world and from the mundanely weird people who populate it."—NPR

"Rapp's novel is surprisingly high-spirited, comic without diminishing the emotional depth of his motley crew. That''s largely thanks to Rapp's gift for figurative language."—Washington Post

"Rapp is such a skillful and evocative writer he can make magic out of the ordinary stuff of daily life... Know Your Beholder has a surprisingly satisfying finish on multiple levels... It's nothing less than masterful."—Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Know Your Beholder is funny and sad, smart and moving, dark and hopeful. Adam Rapp writes with a lyrical acumen and wit that are not just impressive, but immensely engaging."—Jonathan Tropper, New York Times bestselling author of This Is Where I Leave You and One Last Thing Before I Go

"Know Your Beholder is a message from the heart and from the beard, a message from the new weird America to every guy who's ever spent too much time in his bathrobe and every women who's ever considered what that guy would look like if he actually got himself together and shaved. Adam Rapp knows about laughing to keep from crying. He's a melancholy Lenny Bruce of the sentence and his imagination is never less than intense."—Hari Kunzru, author of the national bestseller The Impressionist