Wild Game

Starred review from May 6, 2019
This page-turning memoir about an especially fraught mother-daughter relationship from novelist Brodeur (Man Camp) reads like heady beach fiction. At age 14, Brodeur became enmeshed in her mother Malabar’s affair with Ben—a married lifelong friend of Brodeur’s stepfather Charles—covering for them even after Charles’s death. At 21, Brodeur cheated on a boyfriend with Ben’s son Jack: “like our parents before us, we spoke in a language rich in innuendo.” She later became engaged to Jack, who knew nothing of their parents’ affair, and kept quiet about it until Ben confessed to his family and ended the relationship with Malabar. Brodeur and Jack’s wedding became “Malabar’s battleground. She would be radiant... and show Ben what he was missing”; to that end, Malabar brought out a family heirloom promised to Brodeur on her wedding day—a necklace of allegedly priceless gems—and wore it herself. Wealth and social prominence abound against a summertime Cape Cod backdrop: Malabar was a Boston Globe food columnist, Charles founded the Plimoth Plantation living history museum, and Ben was a proud Mayflower descendant. Nine months after Ben’s wife’s died, Ben and Malabar married, and Malabar quickly cut off Brodeur, whose own marriage was crumbling: “Now that Malabar finally had Ben... she no longer needed me.” This layered narrative of deceit, denial, and disillusionment is a surefire bestseller.

August 15, 2019
A memoir about a charismatic mother who embroiled her daughter in a dramatic affair. In a candid, deftly crafted narrative, Brodeur (Man Camp, 2005), co-founder of the magazine Zoetrope: All Story, reveals the family secrets that burdened her life from the age of 14, when she became her mother's confidante and accomplice in a love affair. Her mother was an attractive, charming woman, "a breath of fresh air, an irresistible combination of clever and irreverent," and the author worshipped her. Although the lover was a close and long-standing family friend and the affair betrayed her kind and beloved stepfather's trust, Brodeur willingly helped her mother cover her tracks and distract others from noticing the couple's disappearances, covert touching, and secret glances. For years, she felt thrilled by her role and deeply sympathetic to her mother's needs for love and sex. After her stepfather had suffered several strokes, her mother felt more like a caretaker than a wife. She confided in her daughter that she needed more--and she needed her daughter's support. Brodeur was flattered by her mother's dependence on her, and when she traveled during a gap year, she called home weekly, feeling guilty "for not being more supportive" by phoning more often. Not until she shared her story with a new boyfriend--and later with a woman friend and her future husband (who, bizarrely, was her mother's lover's son)--did the author realize that someone outside of the family would see the arrangement far differently. "I felt confused," she writes, "suddenly thrust into a state of disequilibrium" by listeners who saw her mother "as perpetrator, not victim." Admitting that her mother's behavior was abusive made her feel "an unbearable sense of disloyalty." Her need to separate herself from her mother grew, however; in college, she tried to create a new identity, different from someone "so consumed by her mother that she hardly knew where her mother ended and she began." That project defined her life for years to come. A vivid chronicle of a daughter's struggle to find herself.

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September 1, 2019
Brodeur's engrossing memoir examines a family defined by one woman's all-consuming magnetism. In 1980, when the author was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her in the middle of the night to tell her that Ben, Brodeur's stepfather's best friend, had kissed her. Brodeur became Malabar's closest confidante, erasing the boundary between parent and child, as that kiss grew into a long-term affair. Brodeur describes the thrill she felt at being her mother's best friend and the guilt of hiding such a major secret from her stepfather and brother. She helped Malabar and Ben shore up alibis and arrange meetings on Cape Cod and in New York City. Wild Game follows Brodeur through adulthood, examining the ripple effects that her relationship with her mother had on Brodeur's own romances. Brodeur changes the names of those involved except for her parents, acknowledging that the story is not hers alone. However, Brodeur includes clearly identifying details about her well-known stepfather, which some readers may find distracting. An absorbing story of secrets, love, and family.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2019

Executive director of the Aspen Institute's Aspen Words and cofounder with Francis Ford Coppola of the magazine Zoetrope: All Story, Brodeur has her own story to unfold. Told at age 14 by her mother, "Ben Souther just kissed me," Brodeur became an enthusiastic, then burdened confidante as her mother launched an affair with her husband's best friend. A 100,000-copy first printing.

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