Why ‘Wild Game’ should be your next book club pick

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Adrienne “Rennie” Brodeur’s stunning memoir, “Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me,” begins with tantalizing secrets whispered decades ago from a mother to her teenaged daughter upon the beaches of Cape Cod.

Rennie’s mother, Malabar, just kissed her stepfather’s best friend and she liked it. In actively revealing her crimes to her daughter, Malabar recruits Rennie as her accomplice and coconspirator; in turn, Rennie becomes her mother’s keeper, setting up and covering up her mother’s affair with a close family friend for decades to come.

In vividly recounting these dirty details and inviting the reader into her past, Brodeur names us, too, as secret coconspirators in this delicious memoir.

So “Wild Game,” and Brodeur’s family secret, becomes our secret: One that keeps our hearts pounding and our minds racing with questions long after the sun’s gone down. We want to shout these secrets from rooftops (or put them in writing).

But unlike Brodeur, who’s an impressionable 14 years of age when she first learns of her mother’s sins, we can share because Brodeur shared them first.

The plot goes like this: Rennie and her mother, an accomplished cook and writer, would facilitate frequent meetings and dinner parties between Malabar, Malabar’s husband, Malabar’s husband’s best friend (who’s an accomplished hunter) and Malabar’s husband’s best friend’s wife.

How?

A cookbook called …

“How about something simple?” Malabar said. “We could call it ‘Wild Game.’ It tells the reader what to expect but promises adventure too.”

So the wild game cookbook called “Wild Game” was born.

Its recipes are never published, but a memoir borrowing the same title is.

Chef Brodeur’s three course meal is tough and meaty, serving the reader with many questions to chew on (over perhaps with a cheese plate and mulled wine at a book club). What kind of mother would encourage her daughter to steal? Is Brodeur betraying her mother’s confidence by writing this book? Why dish on these family secrets now? Why were most of the names changed (but not Malabar’s)? And what happens next?

A Google search would reveal obits and wedding announcements, not necessarily in that order, but Brodeur cooks up a meal where every word should be savored in the order in which they’re served.

Because, as one of Brodeur’s mentors tell her in the book: “You have no idea how much you can learn about yourself by plunging into someone else’s life.”

This book will change you, or at least teach you to value who you have.