Wolf at the Table
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
The Corrections meets We Need to Talk About Kevin in this harrowing multigenerational saga about a family harboring a serial killer in their midst in this “masterful novel” that “peers into the dark heart of America” (Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Independence Day)
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rapp (Know Your Beholder) draws inspiration from his mother's experiences as a prison nurse for a diffuse meditation on the nature of evil. The story begins in 1951 Elmira, N.Y., where 13-year-old Myra Lee Larkin encounters a stranger at a diner. Claiming he's Mickey Mantle, the man offers her a ride home in the rain. Myra Lee makes it back safely, but learns the next morning that three of her neighbors, including a child, have been stabbed to death, and that a man seen entering the house matches the description of the stranger who drove her home. The murders remain unsolved and Rapp jumps forward in time, first to 1964 with a section dedicated to Myra Lee's wild younger brother Alec, who's decided to embrace a life of crime and partner up with a violent thief. Then, in 1966, their mother, Ava, now a nurse in an Illinois prison, loses a friend and colleague to mass murderer Richard Speck, and examines serial killer John Wayne Gacy shortly before his execution. Despite an eerie vibe, enhanced by Alec's cryptic postcards to family members that suggest he might be a serial killer and Myra Lee's lingering memories of her encounter with the stranger, the narrative's broad scope ends up diluting its impact. This falls short of the material's rich potential.
