Adrienne Brodeur In Conversation With Dani Shapiro – “Little Monsters”

On Friday June 30th at 4.00 pm, The Hickory Stick Bookshop welcomes award winning author Adrienne Brodeur to the store to talk about her new book “Little Monsters” which comes out on June 27th. She will be in conversation with NYT bestselling author Dani Shapiro, author of the award-winning novel “Signal Fires”. After their conversation Adrienne will sign copies of her book.

This event is free and open to the public. If you are unable to attend this event, you may reserve a signed copy of “Little Monsters” by calling The Hickory Stick Bookshop at (860) 868 0525, or shop our website 24/7 at www.hickorystickbookshop.com.

ABOUT THE BOOK
From the author of the bestselling memoir “Wild Game” comes a riveting novel about Cape Cod, complicated families, and long-buried secrets–for fans of the New York Times bestsellers “The Paper Palace” and “Ask Again, Yes”.

Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small, and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated–and as adults their relationship is strained. Now, years later, the siblings’ lives are still deeply entwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.

As the novel opens, Adam is approaching his seventieth birthday, staring down his mortality and fading relevance. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he’s determined to make one last scientific breakthrough and so he has secretly stopped taking his pills, which he knows will infuriate his children. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family–Steph, who doesn’t make her connection known. As Adam grows more attuned to the frequencies of the deep sea and less so to the people around him, Ken and Abby each plan the elaborate gifts they will present to their father on his birthday, jostling for primacy in this small family unit.

Set in the fraught summer of 2016, and drawing on the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, Little Monsters is an absorbing, sharply observed family story by a writer who knows Cape Cod inside and out–its Edenic lushness and its snakes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adrienne Brodeur’s memoir Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me was a national bestseller in 2019; was one of Amazon’s Top Three Books of the Year; was named a Best of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, People magazine, and BuzzFeed, among others; and won the New England Society 2020 Book Award. Currently the executive director of Aspen Words, a literary arts nonprofit and program of the Aspen Institute, Brodeur launched the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2017. Before that, she created the highly influential fiction magazine Zoetrope: All-Story with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. She has spent the last twenty years of her professional life in the literary world, discovering voices, cultivating talent, and working to amplify underrepresented writers.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
“Nobody describes the natural beauty of Cape Cod or the lovely, messy bonds of family better than Adrienne Brodeur. Little Monsters is an absolutely captivating read.”
—Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of The Hotel Nantucket

“Little Monsters is an elegant and ambitious novel, a family saga deeply rooted in the landscape of Cape Cod. Adrienne Brodeur writes about complicated, sometimes difficult people and the natural world they inhabit with lyrical precision and deep emotional intelligence.”
—Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author

“Wrenching, psychologically complex, and emotionally satisfying, Little Monsters is an immersive pleasure. This sprawling, big-hearted family saga is about the lies we tell each other and ourselves that enable us to maintain alliances—and what happens when we start telling the truth.”
—Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Train

“Smart, funny and beautifully written. Brodeur is a brilliant dissector of family relationships, a lyricist of the natural world, and an astute observer of our inner turmoils.”
—Monica Ali, bestselling author of Love Marriage

Author photo credit – Tony Luong