Little Monsters

February 1, 2023

Brodeur authored the fraught family memoir Wild Game, best-booked by NPR and the Washington Post and being developed by Netflix, so it's no surprise that her fiction debut is a fraught family tale. After their mother's death, siblings Ken and Abby Gardner were raised single-handedly on Cape Cod by their oceanographer father. Now, Ken is a successful businessman and Abby a gifted artist still financially dependent on her brother, and they're competing to come out first with an aging, still ambitious father. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2023
A family's trauma laid bare. As with her memoir, Wild Game (2019), Brodeur sets her debut novel on Cape Cod, whose terrain she knows intimately, within a family, like her own, harboring secrets and lies. It's the summer of 2016, a contentious election looms, and marine biologist Adam Gardner is deeply unsettled by his impending birthday. Soon to turn 70, he feels on the cusp of a great discovery about humpback whales--a discovery, he believes, that will finally earn him the accolades he deserves. Suffering from bipolar disorder that he has managed to keep in check with medication, he decides to free himself from "the mind-numbing effect" of those meds in order "to succumb knowingly to the allure of mania." The immediate effect is energizing: He professes "a remarkable facility with a broad and unexpected range of topics: Shaker furniture, Tibetan culture, black holes, Homer, string theory, you name it," and, most notably, the language of whales. Adam's 70th birthday party is the central event of the novel, an occasion when his son, Ken, an arrogant real estate developer with political ambitions, and his daughter, Abby, an artist just becoming recognized, will present him with gifts they hope will elicit the praise and admiration they desperately covet. Raising Ken and Abby on his own after his wife's death, Adam was a difficult father, distracted by grandiose professional ambitions, undermined by his mental illness. He called his children his "little monsters." Ken, bullied at school, felt neglected; Abby felt demeaned as both a woman and an artist. Adam thought of her as "a special snowflake of the highest order." As Brodeur's narrative unfolds, tensions erupt, revealing festering wounds, anger, and pain. Through Ken's sessions with an unfortunately stereotypical psychiatrist, the shocking details in Abby's latest painting, and the appearance of a mysterious woman, the family's "conspiracy of silence" is irrevocably shattered. A sensitive portrait of troubled lives.

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Starred review from May 22, 2023
Memoirist Brodeur (Wild Game) sets this shimmering novel in the “white-hot mess” of summer 2016. Adam Gardner, a stodgy and sleepless oceanic research scientist on Cape Cod, is not looking forward to his upcoming 70th birthday. In a decisive moment, he stops taking his lithium—prescribed for his bipolar disorder­—in hopes that without the medication he will unlock the secret to how whales communicate with each other. Brodeur alternates Adam’s story with those of the son and daughter he’d raised on his own after his wife died prematurely. Ken is a shrewd businessman and political hopeful hobbled by his pomposity, while Abby is a struggling artist. Both are highly esteemed by their father. By the time of Adam’s birthday party, he’s become newly inspired and “hyperaware” of his life and surroundings. What was supposed to be a normal family event crumbles beneath the weight of hidden animosities, secrets, lies, and buried childhood trauma, all of which play out amid the festivities. Sound character development and a keen sense of place add to Brodeur’s astute portrayal of the turbulence between the siblings and their spouses, and the prose renders Adam’s magical thinking with precision (“Adam felt certain that every book he’d ever read, every piece of art that had ever moved him, every conversation, creature, curiosity, and concept he’d encountered in his lifetime would align like cherries in the slot machine of his mind”). With this intricate story, Brodeur distinguishes herself as a novelist of the first rank.

June 1, 2023
Brodeur, author most recently of the memoir Wild Game (2019), explores a complex web of family relationships and buried trauma in her second novel. The Gardners live on Cape Cod, and each one is guarding secrets in the summer of 2016. Research scientist Adam is about to turn 70 and feels a manic episode approaching, but hopes to ride it out in order to achieve the greatest discovery of his career. His son, Ken, is about to launch a political campaign, though the perfect facade of his life with his wife and twin daughters hides dark secrets. Abby, born the day their mother died, has become a well-regarded artist and hopes her next show will be the one that changes everything. Meanwhile, with the arrival of a new baby, family outsider Steph discovers she has a genetic disorder, upending her own personal history. Brodeur paces the reveals well throughout the richly layered novel. With nuanced attention to gender roles, memory, and connection, she writes a compelling story of a family's summer on the brink.

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Starred review from August 4, 2023

DEBUT In her first novel, Brodeur returns to the complicated bonds of family that made her memoir Wild Game a hit. Set in the stunning landscape of Cape Cod as the summer of 2016 winds down and the tensions of the historic presidential election heat up, the novel begins with the Gardner family preparing to celebrate the 70th birthday of patriarch Adam. His children, Ken and Abby, lost their mother just after Abby's birth, and their relationship is deeply complex as a result. Adam's life as a celebrated marine biologist and his attendant bipolar disorder often left the children stranded in a world of their own. Now adults with lives, secrets, and ambitions, Ken and Abby each struggle to come to terms with their place in the family, at the same time as a stranger enters the equation. Adam's faculties are failing too, as he strains to make one final discovery. VERDICT Family drama novels abound, but Brodeur's searing insight into character, motivations, and relationships will leave readers gasping in recognition and appreciation. Don't miss this masterpiece.--Julie Kane

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.