Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Adrienne Brodeur, 2020
Houghton Mufflin Harcourt (HMH Books)
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781328519030
Summary
A daughter’s tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity.
On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come …
Ben Souther just kissed me.
Adrienne instantly became her mother’s confidante and helpmate, blossoming in the sudden light of her attention, and from then on, Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help orchestrate what would become an epic affair with her husband’s closest friend.
The affair would have calamitous consequences for everyone involved, impacting Adrienne’s life in profound ways, driving her into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. Only years later will she find the strength to embrace her life—and her mother—on her own terms.
Wild Game is a brilliant, timeless memoir about how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make.
It’s a remarkable story of resilience, a reminder that we need not be the parents our parents were to us. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Adrienne Brodeur began her career in publishing as the cofounder, with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, of the National Magazine Award–winning Zoetrope: All-Story. She has worked as a book editor and is currently the executive director of Aspen Words. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Exquisite and harrowing…. [Wild Game] is so gorgeously written and deeply insightful, and with a line of narrative tension that never slacks, from the first page to the last, that it’s one you’ll likely read in a single, delicious sitting.
New York Times Book Review
As the saying goes, you can’t make this stuff up. [A] remarkable web of relationships in a privileged, Cape Cod world and the lies a daughter was forced to tell. Riveting.
Toronto Star
Wild Game is a memoir, but it reads very much like a novel with a first-person narrator, bringing readers closely into scenes with vivid sensual detail that paints the atmosphere with the adoring eyes of the enthralled daughter the author once was. Wild Game, for all its luscious prose and tantalizing elements, is ultimately about the slow and painful process of losing a mother.
NPR
[A] vivid memoir…[Brodeur] writes beautifully, even tenderly, as a mother herself, aware of repercussions, knowing how it all ended.
BBC
I can’t stop thinking about this extraordinary memoir.… Brodeur takes on the complicated subjects of mother-daughter relationships and family secrets with masterful storytelling and cinematic style. Be forewarned that this book requires the buddy system; you’ll need to discuss it with someone the minute you finish!
Orange County Register
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me works effortlessly to earn my highest compliment for a memoir: It reads like a novel. The story immediately drew me in into [its] magnetic and complicated world.
Psychology
Brodeur is a deft memoirist, portraying Malabar as a woman traumatized by a violent parent and early tragedy. In this stunning tale of treachery—unsettling yet seductive—we are led through some of the darkest and most alluring corridors of the human heart.
Oprah Magazine
Adrienne Brodeur's stunning memoir is the kind of true story that makes you wonder why we'd ever need fiction. It's a beautifully written, totally engrossing story unlike any we've read before—and will surely be one of the most talked-about books of the year.
Town and Country Magazine
This electrifying, gorgeously written memoir will hold you captive until the last word.
People
[A] mother’s affair with her husband’s best friend… set in motion years of consequences, grief and family struggles, retold intimately by Brodeur and layered with detail, excitement and heartbreak throughout years of Cape Cod summers.
Parade
(Starred review) This page-turning memoir about an especially fraught mother-daughter relationship from novelist Brodeur reads like heady beach fiction.… This layered narrative of deceit, denial, and disillusionment is a surefire bestseller.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Brodeur's story explores the bond between mother and daughter and the ripple effect a family secret can have when passed among generations. Highly recommended. —Erin Shea, Ferguson Lib., CT
Library Journal
An absorbing story of secrets, love, and family.
Booklist
[A] candid, deftly crafted narrative.… A vivid chronicle of a daughter's struggle to find herself
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What do we learn about the author from how she tells her tale—both what she chooses to tell, and the tone of voice in which she tells it? Is this a story about her mother’s misbehavior, or about something else?
2. Revisit the Mary Oliver poem, “The Uses of Sorrow,” that serves as an epigraph to the book. Do you see the darknesses in your own life as gifts, or would you wish some of them away? Is growth possible without suffering? Consider Margot’s advice to Rennie that happiness is a choice. Is gratitude in the face of life’s difficulties a habit of mind we can choose to cultivate?
3. Malabar makes life more interesting for everyone, including us as readers. Do you feel a little bewitched by her charms? Would she be as compelling without her flaws? Doyou admire her? If so, in what ways?
4. How does Malabar upend traditional roles for women, and how does she subscribe to them? How has her mother Vivian’s influence shaped her sense of identity, as well as her relationships with other women? Rennie’s friend Kyra diagnoses Malabar as lonely, and says that loneliness is about not being known for who you are. Does Malabar know herself?
5. Malabar’s marriage to Charles and her romance with Ben occur within a privileged milieu at a time when gender roles were narrowly defi ned. What are the values of this social set, and how do they do harm to its members? Can the follies of the characters be blamed in part on an unhealthy worldview?
6. Compare Ben’s conduct during the affair to Malabar’s. Whom do you feel more sympathy for? When you look at all the adult characters in the book, is there a villain in this story?
7. Rennie is a victim of harm, a beneficiary of kindness, and an actor—for good and ill—in other people’s lives. Which of these roles does she have the most diffi cultyacknowledging? Do we learn more about how to live from our parents’ mistakes orfrom what they do right?
8. "Understandable but not acceptable" becomes Jack and Rennie’s mantra in light of the affair. Where does Rennie demonstrate that she doesn’t accept her mother’s behavior? Do you think she might hold her mother more accountable? Who is helped more by forgiveness: the forgiven or the forgiver?
9. How does Rennie’s involvement in her mother’s deception hurt her relationship with herself? And how does it damage her relationships with other people in her life? By the end of the book, have all the wounded relationships been healed?
10. Rennie manages to separate from her mother, assume ownership of her own life, and chart a new path. What are her strengths, and how do we see her using them first to help her mother, and later, using them as a force for good in her own life? What other resources does she employ to help her become the person she wants to be? Does she inspire you to address aspects of your own life that are holding you back?
11. Rennie has two experiences where time collapses and the layers of her past rush in: just before her wedding and after she gives birth to her daughter (pp. 176, 223). Whatdo these moments do for her? Have you had a similar experience that has granted you a profound glimpse of your life?
12. Throughout the story, secrets are kept—about Christopher, about the affair, about Charles’s aneurism—ostensibly to protect others from pain. Is there anything wrong with this logic? The author says that lying comes with the territory when your parents get divorced, and you don’t share information about one parent if you think it will disturb the other. Do lies of omission pave the way for bigger lies? Is a lie ever completely harmless?
13. Is it fair of Malabar to demand that Rennie never sell the necklace? Which verdict of an appraisal would be worse: for the necklace to be valuable or valueless? Would you do as Rennie does and avoid the question? Is there an heirloom in your family that’s been divisive?
14. The author shows us Cape Cod as a place of beauty, history, and bounty. In what ways does the setting contribute to the meaning of the story?
15. Rennie actively reads to help her clarify and articulate her experience. Margot tells her, "You have no idea how much you can learn about yourself by plunging into someone else’s life (138)." What light does this story shed on your own experience as a parent or child? Have books helped you make sense of your own life?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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