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.

Okay, so let me start by saying this: I went into this one thinking I was going to get something completely different. What I read was not the book I thought I was signing up for. That’s not the book’s (or the author’s) fault, but it definitely affected how I experienced it. I read a review that claimed this was a story about a family hiding a serial killer in their home and covering up his crimes for years. Naturally, my morbid curiosity was piqued, and I dove in expecting something dark and twisty, full of secrets and suspense. But… that’s not this book. At all. I’m pretty sure whoever wrote that review didn’t read this book.

Instead, what you get is a slow-burn literary novel about a family haunted by trauma, disconnection, and the lingering shadows after a shocking act of violence. The serial killer angle? It’s more of a faint whisper than a central plot point until the very end – and even then, it’s handled with subtlety rather than shock. If you’re going in expecting Silence of the Lambs vibes, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

That said, once I adjusted my expectations (which took a hot minute, I won’t lie), I could appreciate what Adam Rapp was going for, even if it didn’t quite land for me. This is a sprawling, character-driven story that spans nearly six decades, from 1951 to 2010, with each chapter leaping forward in time and shifting between perspectives. The book starts in 1951 with Myra Lee’s (the oldest Larkin sibling) perspective – and surprisingly, this is the only chapter where the entire Larkin family is together. As the book moves forward, it focuses on just a few key players – mainly Myra Lee, her troubled brother Alec, their distant and complicated mother Ava, and eventually Myra Lee’s son, Ronan.

The structure could have been confusing – there’s a lot of jumping around, and we don’t stay with any one character for long – but somehow, it works. I never felt lost. Rapp has this way of quickly grounding you in each new time period and character mindset without making you feel like you’re scrambling to keep up. It’s a testament to how well these characters are written: flawed, human, and deeply burdened by what’s gone unsaid in their family for generations.

Myra Lee is probably the most fully fleshed out of the bunch. She’s smart, pragmatic, and carries the weight of responsibility since she was always the one taking care of her younger siblings. Alec, on the other hand, is the wildcard. From early on, you sense that he’s not just troubled – he’s dangerous. And yet, Rapp resists turning him into a caricature. Instead, he explores Alec’s unraveling with empathy and restraint, making the eventual revelations about his life feel both tragic and inevitable.

What really stood out to me was how well Rapp captured the slow erosion of a family over time. Like the empty table on the cover of the book, this is a family who went their separate ways and never came back together. The book shows how trauma trickles down through generations. The Larkins all carry their wounds differently, and watching how they fracture – and sometimes try to mend – is the real heart of the novel.

Despite being well-written, there was one thing that really bugged me. The repeated use of slurs, especially the N-word and the R-word, was jarring and deeply uncomfortable. I get that the author was trying to paint certain characters as cruel or ignorant, but there are other ways to do that without repeatedly throwing those words into the mix. It took me out of the story every time and left a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall, this is a well-written character study with strong literary chops, but it is not a thriller. If you’re in the mood for a moody, decades-spanning exploration of family dysfunction, then this book might work for you. But if you’re looking for a high-stakes serial killer narrative – this isn’t it. Would I recommend it? Yes, but with a big ol’ asterisk: know what you’re getting into. This is less true crime/serial killer stalker and more literary melancholy. Go in with the right expectations, and you might just find it quietly haunting. Had I gone into this one with different expectations, I probably would have rated it higher. As it stands, it just wasn’t quite gritty enough for me.