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Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur

Literary fiction

Little Monsters

by Adrienne Brodeur

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Quick take

Over the course of one Cape Cod summer, a complicated family slowly unravels as its patriarch loses his grip on life.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Social_Issues

    Social issues

  • Illustrated icon, Family_Drama

    Family drama

  • Illustrated icon, Siblings

    Siblings

Synopsis

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.

Content warning

This book contains scenes that depict sexual assualt.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Little Monsters.

Little Monsters

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 vocalizations

• Ocean spirals: shells, whirlpools, waves, bubble nets, seahorse tails

• Sound’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 . . .

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Why I love it

Adrienne Brodeur’s beautiful new novel, Little Monsters, is set in Cape Cod and my goodness, what authority she has in describing that world. The prose of this novel is alive with the sounds, smells, and sights of the rugged outer Cape, and you don’t have to be the least bit familiar with the area to be transfixed. But setting here is not merely incidental. The landscape, the marshes and the ponds, the whales beneath the surface of the ocean are all weaved into the tapestry of this incredibly moving portrait of a fractured family. Does the place we’re from become an integral part of our DNA? Are we in constant communication with the world around us, whether we realize it or not? This book argues: yes.

And then there are the people who populate the novel. First, we meet irascible Adam. He’s past his prime and knows it, so he’s clinging hard to a time that simply will not come back to him. From there we meet his children—Ken and Abby—and the rest of the cast. There is an immediacy to Brodeur’s language, a specificity that feels intimate and lived in. The characters came alive for me in vivid color, and I wanted for them all the things they wanted for themselves. Respect, a breakthrough, praise, and of course, love.

Little Monsters is my favorite summer read of 2023 and I know plenty of readers out there will agree with me. It pulsates with all the vibrancy of life itself.

Member ratings (2,395)

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Literary fiction
View all
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards