BayouPages | “Little Monsters” by Adrienne Brodeur

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“Like everyone else, she got only one life. The one she was living right now. This life that could only have happened with every experience she’d ever had – that had landed her here, in this perfect moment.”

If you enjoy immersing yourself in novels about the rich and well-to-do, e.g., Jenny Jackson’s 2023 novel Pineapple Street, then Adrienne Brodeur’s recent book Little Monsters might be your perfect summer read. Set in the picturesque Cape Cod, the Gardner family is preparing for patriarch Adam’s 70th birthday – a day he dreads due to the expectation of his retirement as a marine biologist. A widower, battling bipolar disorder and frequently off his meds, Adam is in that state of self-absorption, oblivious to the internal family dynamics. His son Ken, fresh off closing a mega-deal that makes his political aspirations a reality, is obsessed with maintaining a picture-perfect reality, while his wife Jenny is barely holding it all together. Sister Abby, an introverted artist on the brink of discovery, is harboring her own secret, all while navigating the decades-long tension with her brother Ken. 

Brodeur unfolds her story via the four main characters, alongside the outsider perspective of Steph, an out-of-town cop who suspects Adam might be her biological father. As Steph, her wife, and new baby canvas the Gardners in their natural habitat, we readers glimpse the family cracks that the Gardners choose to ignore. As we wrestle with the origins of Abby and Ken’s simmering tension, having survived the death of their mother shortly after Abby’s birth, Brodeur alludes to an even more sinister history that we hadn’t dared to fathom. Brodeur’s telling is both masterful in its delivery and layered in its execution, as each chapter is told from a different perspective. With rich character development and seamless transitions, Brodeur harnesses our attention with the mystery, intrigue, and looming exposures of betrayal. 

I gobbled this book up within 24 hours. And yes, I know I do this often, but this one really fits the moment. Set in the summer of 2016, prior to the election that flipped American idealism on its head, Brodeur gestures to the relative safety we all felt before ideological divisions were exposed and the Covid pandemic uprooted the world. If you’re in the mood for some escapism, voyeurism, and relish family undoing and long-deserved reckonings, then this title should be top of your list. Brodeur is the best-selling author of the memoir Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me from 2019 and the novel Man Camp from 2005. 

“Whenever I paint the truth, no matter how strange, people see themselves in it.”