I really wanted to love this book. I know it comes highly recommended, but I just couldn't get into it. I found the persons within the memoir extremely selfish and irritating which made me not want to even read it. Overall, this book just wasn't for me.

Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me by Adrienne Brodeur is a wild memoir. Every time you think, wow, that was pretty messed up, it gets even more messed up. Although none of the major characters in this book are particularly likeable, it’s almost impossible to stop reading.

Adrienne’s mother, Malabar, starts a dramatic secret affair with her husband’s married best friend, Ben. Not only is this affair is clearly a terrible idea because the two couples regularly socialize, Malabar pulls her teenage daughter into the deceptions. These start out with making excuses for Ben and Malabar to meet, covering for her mother’s trips to Manhattan with Ben, and go on to covering up a blackmail attempt. Malabar waits for years for her husband to die, at one point literally going from his hospital bed to see her lover. Adrienne is almost in a magical thrall to her mother, accepting this as sweet and caring. She’s so caught up in the story, which eventually leads to Adrienne marrying Ben’s son, Jack. It’s a ride, and I could not stop reading. I was just dying to see what would happen next, even though I wasn’t strongly rooting for any of the characters.

There’s a bit of Rich People Non-Problems here, where no one really has to go to work so they have a lot of time for eating, drinking, travel, affairs, and navel-gazing about it all. When Adrienne needs to mull things over, she does it from Maui beaches or moves out of her married home in San Diego to her own Murray Hill apartment. Ben is described as a “real” fisherman, not a fishing hobbyist like those Cape Cod tourists, but “real” here doesn’t mean a career, it means traveling the world for the most pristine, exotic spots to fish. It makes for a beautiful setting, and adds to the unreality of the story. At one point, young Adrienne considers the wealth her stepfather Charles has brought to their family. Before that, they just had an Upper East Side apartment and summers on Cape Cod, and their summer cottage was really small.

The affair is front and center, but the story also touches on the quieter non-problems of prep schools and admission to top colleges, of family connections to major publications, of household staff (Oh, that one turned into an actual problem) and of course keeping up appearances in a massive family estate with a slightly less massive family trust.

This was a memoir that felt like a novel, until towards the end, when the author-narrator tells her aging mother Malabar, who now has mild dementia, about the book. So much of the plot hung on Ben and Malabar’s plan to wait until Lily and Charles were dead to reveal their affair, it seems like a final fuck-you to make sure Malabar is still alive, although confused and weak, and reveal the secrets of her life this way. The narrator is no longer used as a teenage pawn in others’ dysfunction, she’s carrying on the family tradition of using others. It was a bit upsetting to remember these are real people and real relationships, not a wild and thrilling novel. Ben Souther and his son Jack get aliases, but Malabar is called Malabar. It’s hard not to see this twisted, page-turning book as personal revenge, too.

Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur (#100 in 2019)

When Adrienne Brodeur was only fourteen years old, her best friend confided in her about love. Adrienne's best friend told her about how Ben Souther kissed her. Adrienne's best friend asked her to keep it a secret. While this would have been normal for teenage girls to discuss, there was one slight problem: Adrienne's best friend was her mother and the man she kissed was her step-father's best friend. In this secret-spilling memoir, Adrienne Brodeur recounts the emotional rollercoaster that was being her mother's confidante. Brodeur discusses the repercussions for the affair that she was coerced into covering up and how the lies affected her own relationships and emotional wellbeing as an adult.

I'm not sure what drew me in at first, but I think part of it had to do with the setting: Cape Cod. Adrienne's background revealed a broken family as her parents were divorced and both in relationships with new people. While this family dynamic isn't abnormal, Adrienne's mother lacked the understanding of proper boundaries between parent and child. When Adrienne's mother, Malabar, confides in her that summer night, telling her about the kiss between her and Ben, Adrienne's life changes entirely. Where Adrienne never felt important amidst the drama and extravagance of her mother, she finally felt that connection she longed for. Malabar and Ben both used Adrienne's innocence and desire to be included as a cover for their years-long affair behind the backs of their respective spouses. Malabar was manipulative and encouraged Adrienne's dishonesty for her personal gain, which is a clear abuse of power and, as far as I'm concerned, emotional abuse on some level. What broke my heart the most is that Adrienne recognized it was wrong but desperately wanted the acceptance of her mother. The strength Adrienne demonstrates in her adulthood is so special and shows immense growth as an individual. Isn’t that what everyone looks for in a dynamic character/person— change? This memoir captivated me from the very start and it only helped that my own memories of Cape Cod helped to imaginatively set the scene. Four stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I was excited to read Wild Game last year (yay! Christmas presents!) but when I finally got to it earlier this month, it didn’t work for me. I’m reluctant to heavily criticize memoir in the way I would criticize other genres, just because this is someone’s life we’re reading, but this memoir fell flat of my expectations.

The summer that the writer was 14, her mother woke her up with five words that will forever change their lives: Ben Southern kissed me. By sharing the information with her daughter, and involving her in the affair, Adrienne goes from being her mother’s daughter to her confidante and would almost say complicit in the affair.

If you like quick and turn the page reads, you would probably like this one. It was an interesting book, almost like a confessional diary but I couldn't get interested in the writer and her relationship with her mother. The toxicity between them was unexplored. She didn’t seem to delve into herself or how her mother truly affected the writer’s choices.The individuals in this book are self-absorbed and unlikable and while the writer experienced something truly unique and traumatic, we see fleeting glimpses of real emotion about it in the book and any sort of growth on the character’s behalf doesn’t come until the very end. It felt thin for a good portion of the memoir.

The enmeshment of a lifelong relationship between mother and daughter. The enmeshment begins when the young daughter witnesses her mother cheating on her father. The mother enlists the daughter's help in concealing this from the rest of the family for years. Very strange and unhealthy.

When Rennie Brodeur is 14 years old, her mother gently awakens her from a deep summertime sleep. Malabar tells her that their family friend, Ben Souther has kissed her and make no mistake, she kissed him back. Having already accepted her parents divorce, Malabar’s marriage to Charles and summers in Cape Cod, young Rennie is enamored with the idea of being her mother’s confidante. Sworn to secrecy she begins a ten year journey of deception, lies and convenient cover ups for Ben and Malabar’s illicit affair. As a young girl Rennie sees it as romantic, true love - something her mother desperately deserves. They are two halves of a whole, Malabar constantly reminds her. Rennie spends her younger years drowning in guilt but when high school ends her travels shine a different light on this suffocating secret. Rennie looks long and hard in the mirror and faces the burden of the baggage she has been carrying for a decade. This memoir is the story of a mother and daughter’s relationship pushed to every possible limit. It takes years for Rennie to discover the balance she must maintain to survive at all. Could not put down this mesmerizing and beautifully written memoir. An absolute must read!

Definitely a fast paced read, while also completely ridiculous. Do daughters really have mothers like this? I had to keep reminding myself it was a memoir and not a fictional tale of a wild life. If you think about what you were doing when you were 14 it really puts her growing up years into perspective. A tragedy really.

I’m not going to lie, this was a crazy book. I had to remind myself throughout that this was a memoir, not some farfetched fiction. There were so many moments while reading this that I stopped to say to my husband, you’re never going to believe this! It was shocking and bizarre, and yes, of course, a gripping story. Brodeur’s got baggage beyond comprehension, all completely justifiable, but she manages to cobble together a life in spite of that. I am amazed at her resilience, and appreciate her lowering the bar for motherhood so that we can all sleep a little easier about the job we are doing.

This is an irresistible, deeply engaging memoir of a victimized young girl who was involved in her mother's narcissitic, destructive adultery. I won't go over the plot, as it has been widely covered in many wonderful reviews. As toxic families, go, this one is right up there. There's an honesty in the writing that is sometimes very hard to bear and often provokes uncomfortable questions. Highly recommended for book clubs, as the content will generate plenty of discussion and controversy.

I was given an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

I don't generally read memoirs. They really aren't my thing, and I tend to prefer the world of fiction to real life. When I saw the title of this book though, I couldn't help myself. It sounded like an episode of Jerry Springer, and I was curious. It took me a while to get to it, and the book has already been published, but here we go. While reading this I was reminded of "The Glass Castle" in a way because both are memoirs about awful parents.

First of all, Malabar is TOXIC as hell. She decides to cheat on her ailing husband with his best friend and uses her 14 year old daughter as an accomplice and an alibi. Adrienne, or Rennie as people call her, mentions that she grew up without a moral compass, because what was right was whatever pleased her mom at the time. That's an important thing to remember, because it's something that follows Rennie throughout her mom's twenty year affair. Even as an adult, Adrienne's life is all about her mother. She marries the son of her mom's lover (ICK) and is put in a compromising position when he finds out that not only have their parents been sleeping together for years, but she knew about it and never said anything to anyone. Her mom essentially gaslights her throughout her life in order to get her to do whatever she wants, and it isn't until years of therapy later that Rennie starts to see their relationship for what it was.

At the end of the book, Rennie faces her fears of being like her mother when she has her first daughter. Having a toxic parent myself, I could almost put myself in her shoes, which made it bittersweet for me to read about. I remember having that same feeling while holding my daughter, wondering how anyone could do the things that were done to me and call themselves a parent, knowing that as scared as I was to make the same mistakes, somehow, it was all going to be okay.

I would definitely recommend this for anyone who wants to read a wildly complicated mother daughter memoir.

Members of my book club who have read this book can't stop talking about it! It's been passed around the club & was highly sought after & stolen multiple times during our Holiday Party Dirty Santa Book Exchange. Who knew a codependent mother daughter relationship would resonate with so many women? ;-)

Wild Game is my first 5 star memoir of 2019 and I flew through it in two days! It’s an incredible, yet sad and disturbing story. Malabar (“Rennie’s” mother) is a vibrant, but highly manipulative character and she has her tentacles wrapped tightly around her daughter…and all this impacts Rennie’s adult life. But, this isn’t what makes this memoir shine. Brodeur can write…and the Cape Cod setting comes alive through vivid descriptions of the water, the wildlife, and the food. Malabar is a cookbook author and food writer and food plays an integral role in this story. The book world is full of mother / daughter stories, but this one is unique and Brodeur shows a high level of self-examination in her adult life as she looks back on her childhood, even as she has trouble taking the necessary steps to extricate herself from its damage. Put this one on your reading list for Nonfiction November!

Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me is the story of Adrienne Brodeur’s tumultuous relationship with her mother, Malabar. At just 14, Adrienne’s relationship with her mother changes one fateful night when her mother wakes her up from sleeping to inform Adrienne she’s just been kissed by Ben Souther, her husband’s best friend. Adrienne becomes an accomplice to this secret affair and helps keep it alive for years to come, as she perpetually seeks her mother’s love, affection, and approval. review: When I heard about this book earlier in the year I was immediately intrigued. I’m not one to read a lot of memoirs, but this one read almost like fiction and I flew through it. The writing is compelling and the family dynamics were like a train wreck you couldn’t stop watching. As I read I was equal parts shocked at Malabar’s behavior and appalled that Adrienne could be an accomplice to her mother’s inappropriate behavior. Brodeur also discussed the repercussions for the affair that she was coerced into covering up and how the lies affected her own relationships and emotional wellbeing as an adult, which I enjoyed hearing about. rating: 4.5 out of 5 ⭐️

I'm really sorry I didn't read this earlier because, what.a.ride! Oh wow! Once I got into it, I could not put it down. This book is a gorgeously-written memoir that brings many issues forward for deep consideration.

It is the story of Adrienne (Rennie)'s relationship with her mother, Malabar. One summer when Rennie was 14, her mother confided in her about the beginnings of an affair with her husband's best friend. From that day forward, they became confidantes and co-conspirators, two halves of one whole. Their wild game took a long, dangerous path, and for Rennie, the consequences would reach farther than she could ever imagine.

Even though Malabar's parenting decisions were questionable, I find it hard to despise her. Like Jack said in the book, it's not acceptable, but it's understandable. I understand her humanity, and not even because of what she supposedly went through as a child. Which of us is without flaws? Which of us really know how best to live life and gets it right all the time? We're all just winging it.

It's easy to put people into "black and white" and "bad and good," boxes, but we are so much more complex than that. We have so many sides to us, so many things that make up our stories and who we are. It's true that ultimately, we decide who we want to be, but the courage to chart a new course and stay with it does not come easy.

I must say that Adrienne's storytelling is superb; she wrote Malabar with so much compassion. Her love humanized Malabar. At first I wondered why she referred to her as 'Malabar' instead of 'Mother,' but I soon realised that Malabar loomed so large that it is the only way you can really think of or describe her. In that one word: Malabar.

The book gets a little hard to read at some points, but I can already tell it's a story I will return to: for quotes, for perspective, for understanding.

We included in our book coverage online and in print across 11 Southern California outlets. It was positive coverage.

This was one of the best, yet craziest, books I've read all year. I cannot even imagine having a mother like Malabar. I didn't think it could get any crazier but I was constantly surprised. highly recommend to anyone that loves a good memoir, and even those that don't.

In Adrienne Brodeur’s memoir, Wild Game fact once again proves to be infinitely stranger than fiction. Adrienne is 14 when her mother confides in her that her husband’s best friend has kissed her. And she liked it and wants Adrienne to help facilitate a full-blown affair. This all takes place at the families’ summer homes on Cape Cod. A beautiful home and lifestyle paid for by Adrienne’s wealthy older stepfather. A man her mother pursued hard despite a fifteen-year age difference, who has suffered strokes and is not as active as he once was. As Brodeur details in the memoir’s pages fidelity is not her mother’s strong suit.

This situation continues into Adrienne’s twenties with her lying to virtually everyone around her, including the other man’s wife and children. She buys into her mother’s rationalizations that keeping the affair secret is a kindness to their older, frail, spouses. At some point, she becomes an adult but is still not able to break away from her mother. Who, let’s be clear, falls somewhere on the spectrum between mega-narcissist and textbook sociopath. She is a wretched human being in a pretty package with no thought for anyone in the world but herself. Her emotional abuse of Adrienne goes far beyond just getting her to collude in her lies.

All of this left me torn between sympathy for Adrienne as a teen and judgment as an adult. I’m still not sure how I feel, especially as Adrienne grapples with her own fallout from her twisted relationship with her mother. Read Wild Game only if you’re in the mood for Mommie Dearest mothering and sordid human behavior.

I was expecting something much more juicy, at least that was the impression I got from the publisher's blurb. Instead what I got was a mostly boring story about a wealthy family and a women who never got over her mother issues.
I want my memoirs to be more about enlightenment, living through hell or overcoming something, having a narcissistic mother does not a story make.

“Wild Game” tells a story that could easily be mistaken for fiction. But it’s a much more powerful and remarkable story because it’s true. As a fourteen year old, the author is drawn into her mother’s affair as her confidante and enabler. The affair between her mother and her step-father’s best friend continues for years with Brodeur as a willing accomplice. This is not a salacious, bitter, or vengeful memoir but one told with grace and compassion. In an interview Brodeur said “My mother had a difficult life. She was an enormous narcissist, but she was charismatic, loving, and fun, and I was deeply attached to her.” Brodeur is an exquisite and insightful writer and the courage she demonstrates by telling her story is awe-inspiring. Highly recommended.

My review was posted on Goodreads on 11/19/19.

This was a rare DNF (did not finish) for me. I saw numerous comparisons to The Glass Castle and I have no problems reading a dark memoir. Ultimately this was a story that I did not want to spend time in, probably due more to the disturbing behavior of the mother than any lack of skill on the author.