The Quirky Bookworm

“As any magician knows, it is not the smoke and mirrors that trick people; it is that the human mind makes assumptions and misunderstands them as truths.” Adrienne Brodeur, Wild Game

Title: Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me
Author: Adrienne Brodeur
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: October 2019
Page Length: 258

I have always loved a good memoir and this one does not disappoint. Adrienne Brodeur was raised in Chestnut Hills, Massachusetts with all of the comforts a wealthy lifestyle affords. Brodeur adores her stepfather, Christopher, and is torn when her mother, Malabar, begins an affair with Christopher’s best friend of over 50 years. Keeping the affair hidden from her stepfather consumes Brodeur’s young life and she becomes enmeshed with her narcissistic mother.

Wild Game is a heartbreakingly beautiful account of family relationships. Brodeur writes with elegance about her childhood and her journey to find herself as an adult woman. Brodeur’s ability to view Malabar as a broken, lonely woman that shows strength in the midst of many dark times is one of the reasons this book was fought over by 14 publishers and movie rights already purchased. Click here to purchase.

Wild Game was named Best Book of the Year for 2019 by Town and Country, People, Refinery29, Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, BBC Culture and numerous others. Visit the author’s website here.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.