Little Monsters/Wild Game

Adrienne Brodeur is an author with a connection to Cape Cod. I started reading her memoir, Wild Game, which oddly enough documents her unorthodox relationship with her mother, while I was waiting for her novel Little Monsters to become available. I like her writing style which is unrestrained and descriptive but not overblown. 

Finally Little Monsters arrived on my kindle, and I took it to jury duty in December. (That’s a story for another day! Warning: it involves a transvestite lawyer, drunk driving, and an overcrowded, pre-holiday courthouse.) 

Fast forward to Saturday of the glorious MLK long weekend when I returned to Little Monsters. I finished reading about the hellishly dysfunctional Gardner family on a day that began with a blustery thunderstorm and then morphed into a balmy, windswept, blue-sky day.

Now I can get back to Wild Game: My Mother, Her Secret, and Me and reawaken some “mama trauma” of my own.

What makes this book so disturbing is that it recounts a true story. The people are real, and their actions are appalling. Here is the author's mother’s obituary from the Cape Cod Times.

I’m glad I read both books. I liked the memoir better than the novel, and the references to Cape Cod were an added bonus.