Wild Game

My Mother, Her Lover and Me

By: Adrienne Brodeur

Narrated by: Adrienne Brodeur, Julia Whelan

Brought to you by Penguin.

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

© Adrienne Brodeur 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Critic reviews

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

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

Rich in details…intimate yet revealing in their way of a whole world...thrilling (Joanna Scutts)

Impossible-to-look-away-from... builds with anticipation and continues to unfold with observations and revelations

A sumptuous memoir of Brodeur’s glamorous, cocktail-sodden, spectacularly self-involved mother (Emma Beddington)

Exquisite and harrowing . . . so gorgeously written and deeply insightful, and with a line of narrative tension that never slacks, from the first page to the last, that it’s one you’ll likely read in a single, delicious sitting

In this stunning tale of treachery – unsettling yet seductive – we are led through some of the darkest and most alluring corridors of the human heart

Wild Game tells an extraordinary family story, but this riveting memoir will touch all mothers and daughters. Adrienne Brodeur explores with compassionate clarity the intense bonds of love and need that create a family; and the destruction that can ensue. This is a beautiful book (Claire Messud)

A fascinating, beautifully written account of a startling and tumultuous life (Charlotte Heathcote)

It’s all my American friends will talk about (Hannah Betts)