Wolf at the Table: What was it supposed to be?

Adam Rapp’s “Wolf at the Table” was my first read of this year, after unsuccessfully finishing it in 2025. After thinking on it for a few days, I’ve decided that I don’t like it, and want to share my thoughts on why (hopefully without spoiling too much).

The story follows several generations of the Larkin family (Myra, Fiona, Lexi, Ronan, and Alec - there are others but they don’t really matter), from the 1950s to 2010. We run into my first issue with the story here: it has too many “main” characters and follows them over too long a time frame. This makes it difficult to empathize with many of them, and it also leaves much in the air. For example, about halfway through the book one character cheats on his wife while abroad for work. This is never brought up again; we never see him own up to his wife or argue with her or anything. Instead, we get a timeskip and are put into the perspective of a different character. I found this quite jarring, and it happens at other key moments throughout the book.

Something I found annoying (or maybe cheesy is a better word) throughout the book was the innapropriate use of pop culture references. When the main antagonist (if you want to call him that) is about to face justice by his own accord, the last thing I want to read is about how he compares himself to Darth Vader. This is a character who has committed many terrible crimes throughout the story and has lived as a drifter throughout most of his life; why is he comparing himself to Star Wars? There are some other examples of what I thought was tacky, but that one really bothered me as both unrealistic and pretty stupid.

While some of the characters are compelling, many of them do not get enough time and the boring ones get much more. I did not care for Ronan’s story to be blunt, and wish I had gotten more of Myra’s or even Fiona’s. Arguably the most interesting - and most vile - character is Alec, who does not get nearly enough time to develop. I find it also a bit self-serving that the author, a playwright, gave so much time to a character whose profession is a… playwright.

I did quite enjoy the use of baseball (and Mickey Mantle of all people) as a tie in for much of the story. As someone who used to play/watch, the use of a baseball card as a thread to follow throughout most of the book was really cool.

Overall I did not much care for Wolf at the Table. It has a lot of good ideas that it wastes by giving more time to the bad ones. Despite this, I would be interested in reading more from this author.

Verdict: 2/5