Q & A with Author Adrienne Brodeur

Photo: Julia Cumes

Adrienne Brodeur’s debut memoir Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me tells the story of the affair the author’s mother Malabar had with a close family friend. Early on, she drew her daughter, Brodeur, into the subterfuge, a conspiracy which lasted years and had long-lasting effects on Brodeur.

The memoir was bid on by fourteen U.S. publishers in a heated auction, with foreign rights sold in numerous countries. Entertainment Weekly called it a “twisted mother-daughter story” that “could be the next big memoir.” Film rights were preemptively bought by Chernin Entertainment, with Kelly Fremon Craig, director of “The Edge of Seventeen,” set to direct.

Currently the executive director of Aspen Words, a literary center with year-round programming that awards an annual $35k literary prize to a work of fiction with social impact—Brodeur co-founded and edited the prestigious, National Magazine Award-winning Zoetrope: All-Story. She has also served as a judge for the National Book Awards and the National Magazine Awards. 

Brodeur spoke with Spine’s Hiba Tahir, answering ten questions about her memoir ahead of its October 15 release. 

What did the writing process look like for you? What was the journey from initial idea to completed project, and did anything about it surprise you?

If you’re talking about the time it took me to process my life experiences, the journey took decades. If you’re talking about putting words on the page, that took about two-and-a-half years. I began in earnest in early 2016, when I told my mother, my ex-husband, and a few other key players that I planned to write a book about the affair and my involvement. Once I had those conversations – and received their support — I attended a residency where I got a toehold on the book, drafting the first chapters and an outline. Once I returned home, I wrote daily early in the morning. Trusted friends read and gave me feedback along the way and, within a year, I had a solid draft to show my agent. She gave me excellent editorial suggestions and I revised accordingly. In late 2017, she sold it as a proposal. I delivered a final draft to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October 2018. 

What was your favorite part of the process? Least favorite?

People tend to assume that the writing was painful, but it wasn’t really. I’d spent so much of my life thinking about my early traumas, reading literature to better understand myself, and discussing all of it with friends, that the writing flowed fairly easily. I took great pleasure in the artistry of trying to capture moments: my mother in a certain light, the flavors of a particular game bird, low tide in front of our home. Plus, I was fortunate to write without an eye to a wider public. No one was waiting for this book. Very few people even knew I was writing it. 

Surprisingly, the pre-publication time – although it’s gone very well – has been more stressful. It’s vulnerable to await a public reaction, especially knowing that every reader will bring their own interpretation. I hope that it is evident that the book was written with love.   

Malabar and her lover test recipes for a wild game cookbook they decide to call Wild Game. Was naming the memoir Wild Game an ironic way to keep your mother’s abandoned recipe book alive?

I never considered it from that perspective — the ironic angle of keeping my mother’s abandoned cookbook proposal alive through my own book. The fact is, I wrote my way into the title. The book had a different title when I began, but once I got to the chapter where my mother and I came up with the idea to write a wild game cookbook as a cover for the affair, the title became obvious. My agent and I toyed with others, but Wild Game, with its double entendre, seemed right, and it stuck. 

Over the course of producing this book, what did you learn about yourself, your family, and your writing?

I’d say the biggest lesson I learned is that when you take ownership of your story – the good, the bad and the ugly of it – you’re able to move beyond it and create new paths for yourself. I used to feel that my involvement in my mother’s affair defined who I was. I no longer do. Writing Wild Game allowed me to move on, and I hope the book helps others who are caught in the loop of complicated family dynamics to do the same. 

Were you ever concerned by how your family might react?

Yes, very much. But I followed the wisdom of Vivian Gornick, who wrote a brilliant book about the art of the personal narrative called The Situation and the Story. In it, she advises writers to stay away from settling scores and to be as exacting upon themselves as they are on others. In order for the drama to deepen, she suggests, the writer must show “the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.” I endeavored to do this on every page. 

How do you think the events you relate in this book contributed to your illustrious literary career?

Well it’s funny, despite having literary parents – my father was a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and my mother was a highly-regarded food and travel writer – I was a late bloomer when it came to reading. It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that I started reading voraciously and understood that literature was transformative. My stepmother at the time owned an independent book store in California, and she regularly pressed books into my hands – novels by Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, Jim Harrison and others, as well as books of poetry, memoir and some nonfiction – and my life changed. Reading was instrumental in my decision to leave a career in public policy to pursue one in literature, starting with founding Zoetrope: All-Story magazine. It also changed how I saw my own story. Through books, I was able to enter the minds and situations of others and see how they overcame their challenges. Every book allows you to see the world from a perspective that is not your own. It’s magic. . . .

Are you at all shocked by the response you’ve received so far?

Oh yes, absolutely. I spent a year getting up before 5 a.m. to write a story I felt compelled to write. But no one was waiting for it and there wasn’t a day that I didn’t wonder why this was my priority. In the end, I thought I’d written a good book, but I also thought it was such a singular story, and had no expectation that it would resonate so broadly. The saying goes that the specific is universal, and even though not everyone has been complicit in their mother’s love affair, most all of us have mothers and the relationship can be complicated. 

The Edge of Seventeen director Kelly Fremon Craig will be adapting the book into a screenplay, and directing. Have you given any thought to the film? Who do you want to play you? Who do you want to play Malabar?

My focus has always been on the book – the writing of it and its publication. That said, I’ve taken great pleasure in supporting Kelly Fremon Craig in any way possible. She is brilliant, and we are in sync in our desire to portray my mother and that relationship in a nuanced way. I’m truly in awe at the complexity and difficulty of Kelly’s job: namely to compress time and geography in order to transform a 300-page book into a 90-minute visual experience, all while maintaining the emotional truth that lies at the heart of my story. 

We haven’t discussed actors once. And, believe it or not, I haven’t thought about who should play me or my mother. The truth is I can’t imagine giving Kelly Fremon Craig, a writer/director at the top of her game, my two cents on actors. It would be like me telling an electrician how to rewire a lamp. Trust me, no good would come of it. 

Was this memoir a response to your daughter's question at the end of the epilogue, or was that an anecdote with retrospective importance? If the latter is true, how did you answer her question?

In the epilogue of the book, there is a scene when my daughter is stymied by an assignment to write an essay about a time in her life when her parents are unavailable and she has to overcome a personal challenge alone. I was in the thick of writing Wild Game at the time when she asked me for help with it. When it became clear that my daughter couldn’t grasp the concept of having to navigate difficult situations without parental support, I felt awash with relief from an anxiety I hadn’t realized I’d been holding: that I might have traumatized her in some way. I knew I was a different kind of mother than the one I grew up with, but here was proof that I hadn’t inadvertently repeated her patterns. 

What can we expect to see from you next? Any new projects on the horizon?

The next few months will be entirely dedicated to promoting and supporting Wild Game. After that, I hope to return fully to my life, both personally (as a mother to my children and partner to my husband) and professionally (to a job I love as the director of the literary nonprofit Aspen Words). Yes, an idea for a novel is percolating, but it is more beans than coffee at present. 

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