Genre Fiction
![Adrienne Brodeur - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001HN38FI.jpg)
Little Monsters
"A juicy story…Simmers with tension as secrets explode out into the open." -The Washington Post * "So alluring…I raced happily through the pages." -The New York Times Book Review * "An absolutely captivating read." -Elin Hilderbrand * "Gorgeously told…The work of a seasoned and wonderfully wise storyteller." -Paula McLain
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.
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.
Editorial Reviews
"A juicy portrait of a wealthy family on the brink of disaster. . . Little Monsters simmers with tension as secrets explode out into the open. . . Tensely constructed and absorbing. . . A consummate summer read, which somehow evokes smooth beach glass and hot pink sunsets with nary a mention of either." -The Washington Post
"[An] engaging and neatly plotted novel. . . Little Monsters is so alluring, with its sense of looming familial implosion within a cultural implosion. . . Brodeur is very deliberately examining a small family horror story within a larger political context." -The New York Times
"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
"Gorgeously told, with psychological nuance to spare, Adrienne Brodeur's latest fiction returns us to a world she knows by heart, wind-blown, wave-swept Cape Cod and the fraught, labyrinthine territory beneath the surface of family. This is the work of a seasoned and wonderfully wise storyteller. Brodeur is as masterfully attuned to the complex DNA of kindred secrets and high-risk loyalties as she is empathetic to the specifically tangled lives of the Gardner clan. We ultimately want for them what we want for ourselves, the freedom that comes with hard-won healing and truth telling, and the intimacy that waits if we're brave enough to look back down the loaded barrel of love." -Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife
"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,
"[An] engaging and neatly plotted novel. . . Little Monsters is so alluring, with its sense of looming familial implosion within a cultural implosion. . . Brodeur is very deliberately examining a small family horror story within a larger political context." -The New York Times
"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
"Gorgeously told, with psychological nuance to spare, Adrienne Brodeur's latest fiction returns us to a world she knows by heart, wind-blown, wave-swept Cape Cod and the fraught, labyrinthine territory beneath the surface of family. This is the work of a seasoned and wonderfully wise storyteller. Brodeur is as masterfully attuned to the complex DNA of kindred secrets and high-risk loyalties as she is empathetic to the specifically tangled lives of the Gardner clan. We ultimately want for them what we want for ourselves, the freedom that comes with hard-won healing and truth telling, and the intimacy that waits if we're brave enough to look back down the loaded barrel of love." -Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife
"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,
Readers Top Reviews
DinanandD Lzg
I LOVED this sweeping family story set in Cape Cod. Adam is turning 70. He has dedicated his live to the local whale research and neglected both his health and his children that he raised solo. As his birthday looms he purposely stops taking medication for his bipolar diagnosis. His children have led strange and.complex lives as they live out the issues of their childhood. All of it will come to a head this year at the party. Set against the backdrop of a very beautiful and familiar area of cape code, all of the characters are relatable, likeable, hateable in their choices. A perfect story of American life in the Northeast! If you like sweeping family dramas, contemporary novels and commentary, you will absolutely love Little Monsters.
Anne L. FosterDin
This is a fascinating look at a family: the good times, the bad times, in crisis, and in happiness. Patriarch Adam's 7oth birthday is approaching and he's planning a huge party for the large family. Living in Cape Cod, the extended family enjoys the beach and Adam is an expert on whales, expounding on his discoveries to anyone who will listen. Daughter and artist, Abby is pregnant, son Ken is an aspiring congressman married to Abb'y's best friend, Jenny, and the list of colorful characters goes on! Put them all together and chaos is likely to ensue! But it's a romp as secrets are revealed and loyalties are challenged. It's an engaging novel to be savored! Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
Heather (@Nature.
I decided to alternate between the physical book and audiobook. I loved this full cast. I thought it was fantastic. I enjoyed the whole story of this messy, complicated family! It takes place in Cape Cod, which is like one of our favorite places EVER!, In 2016. Adam is a soon to 70 yo father of his adult children, Ken and Abby. Their mother passed away when they were little and they were raised by their father. Dad is an oceanographer with Bipolar. Ken is hoping for a career in politics, married to his wife Jenny, and they have 2 daughters. Abby is an artist and currently single. Abby and Ken used to be close when they were young but things happened between them…and now, there is a tension between them. This family has secrets and circumstances seem to be tearing everyone apart. Told through alternating chapters and characters, you get everyone's side of the story. One secret comes to light during this story and I was so interested in how that would play out. I thought this was a really good family story. If you like slow burn, character driven books about family dynamics, this will be for you. Very good!!
Kelly GottschalkH
Little Monsters explores the adulthood dynamics of an unconventional family. Adam battles bipolar disorder, and his wife Emily died shortly after giving birth to their daughter Abigail, leaving Adam to raise her and her older brother Ken. Wrapped up in his career, and sometimes his mania, Adam isn’t always as present as he needs to be, leading to stunted relationships when the three are adults. Ken is controlling, and constantly expects the world to conform to his expectations, something his wife and daughters increasingly run out of patience with. He has an ax to grind with Abby, because she (in his mind) abandoned him as they were growing up, and he sees her as constantly trying to upstage him. Abby, on the other hand, is just trying to embrace exploring her art, while reckoning that her life is going to change dramatically soon. And in the wings is Steph, trying to figure out just how connected she wants to be to this family. The story is full of toxic masculinity, with the men constantly presuming they know best and that the people around them should just see things their way. This is well done in that it makes me burn inside (and completely understand why Abby has no desire to be married). There is some ambiguousness to the story, particularly the relationship between Ken and Abby as children. You’ll get the drift, but it will never be outright stated. The ending feels unresolved too, between many of the characters. I’m sure the author intended it that way, but it left me wondering how all of those relationships, or lack thereof, were going to be able to coexist moving forward.
Mark TompkinsKell
Flawed yet compelling characters amidst the skillfully rendered beauty of Cape Cod combine to create a book I could not put down. Little Monsters is a spellbinding family drama full of secretes and lies. I highly recommend it.
Short Excerpt Teaser
1. Adam Adam
Adam Gardner hadn't slept well in weeks. He awoke daily to random words, incoherent thoughts, and fleeting images, convinced that their meaning, though not yet clear, would develop in the gelatin silver process of his mind. Each morning, buzzing, he slung his legs off the bed and sat bolt upright, naked, allowing his male parts to hang over the edge of the mattress, and did his best to capture these jangled dreams, recording what details he could remember in a spiral-bound notebook kept by his bedside. His daytime musings spread onto legal pads, Post-it Notes, and the backs of envelopes and receipts, mostly in the form of unedited bullet-point lists. His house, located deep in the Wellfleet Woods, was littered with scraps of paper covered with his fastidious penmanship.
Deepening pitch of whale vocalizationsOcean spirals: shells, whirlpools, waves, bubble nets, seahorse tailsSound's relationship to the inner-ear labyrinth (another spiral?)Mystery of infinity: 1 = .99999999…
Adam tried to decipher the clues his mind was depositing. He had one big discovery left in him, he felt sure of that. This thing, whatever it was-an idea? a theory?-was taking its own sweet time to make itself known. He knew he needed to trust the process. If he could practice patience and maintain equilibrium, 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.
For now, the anticipation of it, the pre-buzz of impending discovery, was as mouthwatering as the squeak of a wine cork before dinner. He basked in an exquisite sensation of déjà vu, feeling a comradeship with other great discoverers: James Cook, Charles Darwin, Jacques Cousteau…
To his credit, at the onset of this latest bout of insomnia, Adam followed protocol and made an appointment at the clinic in Hyannis knowing full well what to expect: a blood draw, a barrage of questions, an adjustment of medication. What he hadn't expected was that the doctor who'd been treating him for the last three decades had retired. Why Dr. Peabody hadn't bothered to inform him directly was beyond him. Thirty years was… well, a very long time. Adam pointed out the oversight to the front desk clerk, a busty young woman with blue fingernails, who assured him an email had been sent to patients the previous month. Had he thought to check his junk folder? she asked, clicking together her talons. Adam started to answer but held his tongue. (Who, but an idiot, would bother to check a "junk" folder?) He followed her down the hall to the exam room, still puzzling over why his longtime doctor, at least five years his junior, would have retired. To do what?
In Peabody's place, a kid half Adam's age, outfitted in tight pants and alarmingly bright orange socks, strode into the exam room. Was it too much to ask that the person evaluating his mental state have at least one gray hair on his head? The new doctor acknowledged Adam only cursorily, opting to study his electronic patient chart first-mistake number one. Mistake number two was the doctor's lecture on "sleep hygiene." For the love of God! Why not just call a thing a thing? "Passed away," "big-boned"-what was so wrong with "dead" and "fat"? Euphemisms were tools of the feeble-minded. "Hygiene" brought to mind feminine products, something Adam did not wish to contemplate. But that led him to think about parts of the female anatomy he did like to contemplate.
Stay focused, Adam reminded himself. He took notice of the boy's weak chin.
"I don't think we've had the pleasure of a proper introduction," Adam said, cutting the lecture short. "I'm Dr. Gardner."
In his lifetime, Adam Gardner, Ph.D., had had an acclaimed career as a research scientist for the Cape Cod Institute of Oceanography, CCIO to those in the know. His glory days were in the late 1970s when, as a young scientist, he was part of a team that disproved once and for all the notion that life could be sustained only by a photosynthesis-based food chain. In the pitch-black depths of the Pacific Ocean north of the Galápagos Islands, they'd encountered evidence-in the form of foot-long clams, giant red tube worms, and s...
Adam Gardner hadn't slept well in weeks. He awoke daily to random words, incoherent thoughts, and fleeting images, convinced that their meaning, though not yet clear, would develop in the gelatin silver process of his mind. Each morning, buzzing, he slung his legs off the bed and sat bolt upright, naked, allowing his male parts to hang over the edge of the mattress, and did his best to capture these jangled dreams, recording what details he could remember in a spiral-bound notebook kept by his bedside. His daytime musings spread onto legal pads, Post-it Notes, and the backs of envelopes and receipts, mostly in the form of unedited bullet-point lists. His house, located deep in the Wellfleet Woods, was littered with scraps of paper covered with his fastidious penmanship.
Deepening pitch of whale vocalizationsOcean spirals: shells, whirlpools, waves, bubble nets, seahorse tailsSound's relationship to the inner-ear labyrinth (another spiral?)Mystery of infinity: 1 = .99999999…
Adam tried to decipher the clues his mind was depositing. He had one big discovery left in him, he felt sure of that. This thing, whatever it was-an idea? a theory?-was taking its own sweet time to make itself known. He knew he needed to trust the process. If he could practice patience and maintain equilibrium, 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.
For now, the anticipation of it, the pre-buzz of impending discovery, was as mouthwatering as the squeak of a wine cork before dinner. He basked in an exquisite sensation of déjà vu, feeling a comradeship with other great discoverers: James Cook, Charles Darwin, Jacques Cousteau…
To his credit, at the onset of this latest bout of insomnia, Adam followed protocol and made an appointment at the clinic in Hyannis knowing full well what to expect: a blood draw, a barrage of questions, an adjustment of medication. What he hadn't expected was that the doctor who'd been treating him for the last three decades had retired. Why Dr. Peabody hadn't bothered to inform him directly was beyond him. Thirty years was… well, a very long time. Adam pointed out the oversight to the front desk clerk, a busty young woman with blue fingernails, who assured him an email had been sent to patients the previous month. Had he thought to check his junk folder? she asked, clicking together her talons. Adam started to answer but held his tongue. (Who, but an idiot, would bother to check a "junk" folder?) He followed her down the hall to the exam room, still puzzling over why his longtime doctor, at least five years his junior, would have retired. To do what?
In Peabody's place, a kid half Adam's age, outfitted in tight pants and alarmingly bright orange socks, strode into the exam room. Was it too much to ask that the person evaluating his mental state have at least one gray hair on his head? The new doctor acknowledged Adam only cursorily, opting to study his electronic patient chart first-mistake number one. Mistake number two was the doctor's lecture on "sleep hygiene." For the love of God! Why not just call a thing a thing? "Passed away," "big-boned"-what was so wrong with "dead" and "fat"? Euphemisms were tools of the feeble-minded. "Hygiene" brought to mind feminine products, something Adam did not wish to contemplate. But that led him to think about parts of the female anatomy he did like to contemplate.
Stay focused, Adam reminded himself. He took notice of the boy's weak chin.
"I don't think we've had the pleasure of a proper introduction," Adam said, cutting the lecture short. "I'm Dr. Gardner."
In his lifetime, Adam Gardner, Ph.D., had had an acclaimed career as a research scientist for the Cape Cod Institute of Oceanography, CCIO to those in the know. His glory days were in the late 1970s when, as a young scientist, he was part of a team that disproved once and for all the notion that life could be sustained only by a photosynthesis-based food chain. In the pitch-black depths of the Pacific Ocean north of the Galápagos Islands, they'd encountered evidence-in the form of foot-long clams, giant red tube worms, and s...
