Wild Game - Adrienne Brodeur

A daughter's tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity

Every time I fail to become more like my mother, I become more like me.

On a hot August night on Cape Cod, when Adrienne was 14, 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; 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 doomed 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.


This is a book about how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them. It's about the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. It's about mothers and daughters and the nature of family. And ultimately, it's a story of resilience, a reminder that we need not be the parents our parents were to us; that moving forward is possible.

'Not since The Glass Castle has a memoir conveyed such a complex family bond, in which love, devotion, and corrosive secrets are inextricably linked' J. Courtney Sullivan

In 1995 Adrienne Brodeur co-founded, along with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the National Magazine Award-winning fiction magazine Zoetrope: All-Story. She then worked as a book editor in New York for several years, and is currently the Executive Director of the Aspen Words, a literary non-profit and part of the Aspen Institute in Colorado. She divides her time between New York City and Cape Cod.

Fascinating . . . Wild Game is a memoir that reads like a novel . . . describes -- beautifully -- the anguish of a child trapped in a tangled web of love and betrayal that affects her emotional decisions into adulthood
The Times

Eye-popping . . . As books about families, sex and complicity go, this one's right up there
Observer - Rachel Cooke

Rich in details…intimate yet revealing in their way of a whole world...thrilling
Times Literary Supplement - Joanna Scutts

Impossible-to-look-away-from... builds with anticipation and continues to unfold with observations and revelations
Amazon.com Best Books of 2019

A sumptuous memoir of Brodeur's glamorous, cocktail-sodden, spectacularly self-involved mother
Sunday Times - Emma Beddington